InDesign and the other print-oriented Adobe Creative Suite applications handle their own printing and PDF creation. As we all know, this has many advantages: We can carefully tailor our print output or our PDF file, and we can create print and PDF presets, for example.
However, a new bug appeared this week which illustrates another advantage of Adobe’s approach: There was a Mac OS X update this week to version 10.6.7. Many of us routinely apply these updates, knowing they will fix small bugs which we’re probably not even aware of. But this update brought a bug of its own. Suddenly, the Apple Support Forums saw long message threads about printing and PDF creation after this new update was applied. Here is one on printing problems, and here is one on PDF problems. But, the InDesign forums were quiet because, as far as I’ve been able to determine, printing and creating PDF from Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are unaffected.
The problem occurs with Macintosh applications which rely on Mac OS X’s native ability to create PDF and PostScript files?for example, Word and Pages, among others. It also seems to primarily affect OpenType PostScript fonts. Rather than repeat all the details, Adam Engst of the invaluable TidBITS website has written a great summary of the problem.
I did some testing with InDesign CS5, Illustrator CS5 and Photoshop CS5 with several different OpenType PostScript fonts. I could find no problems. I briefly did a test by creating a PostScript file from InDesign and running it through Adobe Acrobat Distiller to create a PDF file and found no problems. Please reply here if you’ve encountered any problems with InDesign in Mac OS X 10.6.7.
This article was last modified on December 20, 2021
This article was first published on March 29, 2011
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MAC Operating Sys. 10.6.8
To create a PDF from QuickBooks
“Print” to [default] printer
From the “Print” dialogue, show in “Preview”
[From “Preview”], “SaveAs” offers “PDF” option.
Very simple, very easy
Apple just released an update, anyone do it yet?
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If you’re still having a problem in Snow Leopard (10.6.7), be sure to download the Snow Leopard Font Patch, released by Apple April 26. It should be available through Software Update, and will probably fix your problem.
To change the system also changed the version of InDesign Indesing 3 to 5 was formated a diciconario and open it in version 5 missing most of the odd page runnings headers. I could not solve yet.
I am having the same issue as well with Illustrator CS2.
Fonts affected so far are Optima, Novarese, New Baskerville.
@Mary: There should be no problem opening CS2 documents in the later CS4 version.
I have InDesignCS2 upgrade from PageMaker. I want a newer version, CS4, I am concerned that I won’t be able to open my docs made in CS2.. Thoughts?
Thanks,
M
Quickbooks has a big problem with this upgrade. I can no longer create PDFs of invoices that use Myriad Pro. My workaround is to “print” a postscript file and then run this through distiller. Works like a charm (a long and disjointed charm at that).
Since switching to a new MBP with OS X 10.6.7, using InDesign CS4 I’ve been having same elongated font troubles as David mentioned above on files that printed fine before (and still do on older MBP with 10.5). The distortions which may affect all the subheads on a page and a whole sidebar of bodytext, can be different each time I print the same page, or maybe not be there at all. Good to know the immediate work-around is 10.6.6.
Since switching to a new MBP with OS X 10.6.7, uisng InDesign CS4 I’ve been having same elongated font troubles as David mentioned above on files that printed fine before (and still do on older MBP with 10.5). The distortions which may affect all the subheads on a page and a whole sidebar of bodytext, can be different each time I print the same page, or maybe not be there at all. Good to know the immediate work-around is 10.6.6.
I had this problem with Kepler Std and Cronos Pro. Printed fine from IDCS5, but not the PDF that was made using Standard: None and Compatibility: Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4). I’m using a custom preset I call ?nocompression pressready? that does not downsample or compress, does not convert color or include profiles, flattens high resolution, and subsets fonts when percent of characters used is less than 100%. Been using this for years with this one particular printer. My back cover copy had roman characters squooshed to half their height, although the italic characters were fine. The type on the spine that had been rotated 90? behaved as David has described ? ?elongated in vertical direction relative to text.?
THEN I used the same settings, but changed the Compatibility to Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3). Yes, I saw the annoying white lines in the PDF onscreen, but I believe what I see in output. The type on the back cover was completely fine; only the rotated type on the spine was a problem. To save time at this point, I?m just going to convert that type to outlines, and pursue a solution under less stressful conditions. : )
ID is affected by this. Before updating, Garamond Pro Italic had no problems. After updating, the font is not recognized at all. In Word, documents using Garamond Italic became big white spaces and in ID, all uses have been replaced by Myriad Pro. Yet Font Book reports Garamond Pro as validated and enabled.
We were having this problem before 10.6.7, with Flash CS5 only.
Odd thing is, it did not seem to affect a user with 10.6.5, also it seems to be spotty in that it does not always happen.
One thing that seemed to cause it most was running Pandora in Safari would not only cause the font to go nuts, but would cause gray screen crashes.
I think there is a lot more going on here than just fonts.
Once I eliminated ALL other programs, installed the fonts locally, (we use UTS2.1.3) it happened a lot less.
Im thinking its more of a memory handling bug than a font or Adobe bug.
as a quick follow up – I have just spent the best aprt of the morning reinstalling 10.6 from the DVD and then using the combo update to take me to 10.6.6 – problem no longer exists – this is a major – MAJOR issue.
Never before have I had such a problem with an Apple upgrade.
I will be posting there next…..
I have used the standard software upgrade from apple and now a whoile load of fonts are unusable in Freehand (I know but these are older docs) and even Word is affected…..
The problem seems not to affect Indy… so far
This is a major headache for me as there are literally hundreds of older docs that will be affected.
how it is possible that Apple have done this???
Seen the strangeness in Word an it also told me of a bad font. Switched to Word 2004 and it seems to work fine.
No issues with InDesign, so far.
Seen the strangeness in Word an it also told me of a bad font. seiches to Word 2004 and it seems to work fine.
No issues with InDesign, so far.
Again, no probs in InDesign but Flash has gone nuts, absolutely unusable
Just tried reinstalling to OS10.6.6
and all works as expected now.
Conclusion: Upgrade to 10.6.7 does affect font printing in InDesign is some circumstances.
This is a new problem with a group of similar documents that previously printed fine.
Type characters print erratically. Extremely elongated in vertical direction relative to type (some type is rotated 90 degrees- affects this and normal type). Sometimes just white letters. Sometimes black letters of a certain font. Sometimes yellow and green letters. Or any combination of above. Only affects this set of similar documents. And not always in the same way.
Other InDesign docs not affected. Other apps not affected.
Recently (before problem) ran software update from Apple that installed updated Epson software. And also OS10.6.7 which is known to cause font problems but specifically not in InDesign
Restarted printer. Restarted computer. Restarted Airport. Restored previously working copy of docs from backup.
Exported sample doc in .inx format and reopened in InDesign.
Updated Epson driver from Epson site.
Re-installed InDesign. Updated InDesign.
Problem persists.
Thanks for the tip, Anne-Marie — I’ll wait a few weeks.
A few things we have noticed re. upgrade and font problems:
Microsoft Word is switching off fonts (Arno Pro, Helvetica Neue Lt Pro in our case) when opening certain files, with the warning sign ‘Bad font detected’. When the file is imported into InDesign the font is missing from the find font/replace drop down menu (basically not registering that the font exists on the computer). In Font Book the font appears to be OK and enabled; however, disabling and re-enabling the font in Font Book appears to solve the problem in InDesign and the font can then be found and replaced.
Where the font is missing in Word, i.e. italic, the words appear transparent.
Also, multiple versions of the same font, in this case Times New Roman, will appear in InDesign Find Font list, which then have to be removed/replaced one by one, instead of the font showing up only once.
I’ve noticed a strange screen-redraw thing where the type appears to be, well — melting! — when I scroll. (Sometimes it just looks like the anti-aliasing has been turned off.) It snaps back to normal as soon as the scrolling stops.
I don’t know if this is related to 10.6.7, but it’d sure be a coincidence if it weren’t.
Current Mac Mini with OS 10.6.7: I have tested the Print PDF output of Pages, current version, with several fonts — Adobe and Microsoft. The files contained only simple text; lorem ipsum paragraphs actually.
There were no problems with printing the resulting PDFs.
@Jeremy: I would hold off, if you haven’t updated yet. I usually do wait a month or so after OS X updates are released, but I was in the middle of diagnosing some system stuff so I went ahead and installed the update right when it came out. OF course.
The good news is, have not seen any issues w/Myriad Pro or anything else out of InDesign, as Steve said. Nor out of Word for that matter, though I’ve just tested simple files.
And I can print from any app I’ve tried so far to my OkiData 6100n. It uses a clone PS3 rip. Love my trusty OkiData!
I can’t print anymore directly from InDesign to RICOH printers equipped with PS3, InDesign talks about a Print Engine error.
I’m experimenting with Pages at the moment, and wonder if anyone can advise me — should I make a point of NOT updating here?