Here’s an interesting InDesign bug and workaround. We had an unnamed reader write in about a problem when converting text to outlines:
- Apply a color to some text and set it to 50% tint in the Swatches palette.
- Add a stroke to the text and apply the same color and tint to the stroke. (He explained that he used this technique to “thicken a font that doesn’t have a bold face.”)
- Now convert the text to outlines.
The stroke of the text changes to 100% instead of staying at the 50% tint. I would say that is likely a bug. However, there’s a relatively easy fix: Instead of applying the tint in the Tint field of the Swatches palette, create a new Tint Swatch and use that. (To make a tint swatch, choose the color you want to make a tint of, then choose New Tint Swatch from the Swatches palette flyout menu.) If you apply the tint swatch to the fill and stroke, the tint is maintained even after you convert to outlines.
Of course, in the name of font designers everywhere, I can’t really recommend stroking a font to thicken it up. I would never do that… unless no one was looking. Also, I am very wary of people converting text to outlines. Most people who do this really do not need to. If a printer told me to convert text to outlines in order to get a page to print, I would probably try to find a different output provider. In a future post we’ll talk about how to force text to output as outlines automatically in emergencies.
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on October 11, 2006
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
