Adobe is Ending Support for Type 1 Fonts
Adobe announced in a Help document published January 27, 2021 that they would discontinue support in their software for PostScript Type 1 fonts for authoring (including creating new content or editing existing content) in January 2023. (Adobe Photoshop will end support for Type 1 fonts in 2021, as announced in 2019.)
Type 1 fonts were introduced by Adobe for use with its PostScript page description language in 1984, and it was widely used in the early days of desktop publishing. Beginning in 1996, Adobe products and type development was switched to the much more versatile OpenType format, co-developed with Microsoft.
While Type 1 fonts are still supported by some operating systems, they aren’t supported on the web or with mobile OSs. They lack support for Unicode information. OpenType fonts support many more characters than Type 1 fonts, they support extended language character sets, and they have a standard file format between operating systems.
Adobe’s “end of support” does not affect PostScript (including EPS) or PDF content with embedded Type 1 fonts. It will continue to be placed in InDesign, Illustrator, and FrameMaker documents and such documents will be able to be properly displayed, printed, or exported to PDF.
In addition, Acrobat and other Document Cloud applications will continue to display and work with Type 1 fonts.
Users of documents with Type 1 fonts will need to replace their fonts with OpenType versions of the same fonts before the deadline. You should begin to see warnings in applications like InDesign if you are using any Type 1 fonts in documents that you are editing.
For more details about upgrade paths and other information, refer to the Help document linked above.
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Note however, that application versions of InDesign and Illustrator released prior to January 2023 will still continue to support Type 1 fonts. This can buy you some additional time to transition.
However, as we all know (from experience), operating system changes and hardware architecture changes, especially with MacOS and increasingly with Windows (unfortunately), you can’t count on those older versions of applications to continue to work into the indefinite future.
Thus it is exceptionally prudent to begin the migration from Type 1 to OpenType NOW. (Note that there is also the chance the Apple and/or Microsoft may pull Type 1 font support from their operating systems!)
– Dov
Thanks, Dov, for the helpful extra comments!
Thank you for this article! Will this change affect the use of TrueType fonts?
TrueType fonts should not be affected. But OpenType fonts have a lot more advantages, and they should be your choice if you need to replace Type 1 fonts.
This is going to be a major problem in 2023, will there be a way to convert Type1 to OTF? I have all my archived files from many years using Indesign which will have type 1 and this is a worrying time. Unless Adobe font database can include fonts like Helvetica Neuve, etc.
A couple things: First, the issue is ONLY if you are editing the text that uses Type 1 (or using it to create new text). If you only wanted to read an archived file, it’s not an issue.
Second, you’ll get warnings (even today…I saw it today) if you open a file with Type 1 fonts letting you know of the deadline so you’ll have lots of time to replace Type 1 with OTF. It can’t be an automatic conversion because it’s a different font, and there will be subtle differences in character width, kerning, etc. So you have two years to convert active files you want to keep using to the OTF version.
Are you sure one will be able to read an archived file with fonts displaying correctly, Steve? Adobe says:
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If they are ‘missing fonts’ then they won’t display correctly. Please clarify. Thanks.
Archive the file as a PDF file and you can still read it. Acrobat/Reader will still recognize Type 1.
But if you open it in InDesign, the font will be marked as “missing”. It will be substituted. No possibility to edit the file or create a new one in InDesign.
FontLab just published a 10-minute video that explains how you can use TransType 4 to convert PostScript Type 1 fonts into modern OpenType fonts. See https://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/transtype/