Manipulating Fonts in PDF with Enfocus PitStop Pro

Do you often convert text to outlines? Do you ever replace font types? Would you like to adjust a font size or change its color? Do you need to fix typos?

Enfocus PitStop Pro can fix all of these issues for you. 

Enfocus PitStop Pro is a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional and it is compatible with Mac and Windows. With Enfocus PitStop Pro, manipulating fonts in PDF files is easy, plus you can convert any PDF to an iPad-ready PDF, a print-ready PDF, or an optimized PDF for client approval.

How do you manipulate fonts with Enfocus PitStop Pro?

We’ll walk you through the right tools and features so in just a few short minutes, you’ll become more proficient when the need arises to adjust problem fonts in PDFs.

Edit text line tool

Please see this page with info on how to get your tools into the Acrobat toolbar.

Select the text that you need to adjust, click on the “Edit text line” icon in your toolbar, and click into the text line where you want to remove or add a character.

Note that the embed status of your font will matter. If you do not have the font on your system and the font is subset embedded, then you will be able to remove characters.  This also means that only characters that were already used in the PDF can be used. If you anticipate that text edits will be required, it’s always a good idea to fully embed the relevant fonts.

Enfocus Inspector

Use the Enfocus Inspector to replace the selected font with another font or to adjust size or word spacing.  There are also options for adjusting the font color which can be found in the color tab, first icon from the left.

If you replace the font by a font that is installed on your system, then you can also choose to subset embed or fully embed.

Note that you can also convert the selected text line to outlines by clicking on the “Actions” option on the right-hand side in your Enfocus Inspector panel when you have the Fonts category selected.

Preflight Profile

There are multiple options in your Preflight Profile to check the fonts in your document. For example:

• Check if a specific font is used in your document
• Check if the fonts are embedded, and if not embed them
• Check for corrupt fonts

There is also a Text category which relates to your output requirements.

Global Changes

In the “Standard” folder you will find a “Font” category.  These are installed when you install Enfocus PitStop Pro.

One of the Global Change options provided is “Remap Font”. Remapping a font means changing one specific font (or all fonts) to a different font. With Global Changes, you also have the ability to convert specific fonts to outlines.

Action List

There are multiple actions to check/edit the fonts/text in your document.

This would allow you to, for example, check for specific fonts or select fonts by name or type and then apply the adjustments that are needed.

Text related actions are also available, for example, selecting text by key phrase or converting all text to outlines.

Benefits to your workflow

Traditionally, making edits or adjustments to a PDF file required access to the native file. This can leave you dead-in-the-water as well as leave your clients frustrated since often, there is no “extra” time factored in for problems. Enfocus PitStop Pro circumvents these issues by giving you the power to adjust text or fonts directly in the PDF file.

The Enfocus product range provides tools to match any scale of print production requirements. If you work with high volumes of PDFs, we’d recommend looking into Enfocus PitStop Server – a stand-alone hot-folder based application – to automate the processes we’ve just covered.

Do you have a specific text or font issue outside of those we’ve mentioned? Or, are you curious about improving another process? Please contact us today!