Soft proofing on a Mac

Simon Cozens

I don't know whether this is a problem with my font, my eyes or my software, but here goes anyway: I'm making slow and steady progress with Silson, my display sans. (Well, many steps backwards and a few steps forward, but enough of that.)

I'm finding that to improve spacing and kerning, I really need to print out specimen sheets on paper rather than look at the text on a screen. Part of the reason why I don't feel I'm getting reliable proofing on screen is because the spacing between glyphs, in OS X's PDF Preview application, appears to vary at different zoom levels. Here is a portion of the proof at 100%:
 
It looks to me that in the word "and", the /a/n space is smaller than the /n/d space, and that there is an ugly gap between the /o/t of "cloth"; the /o seems to hang close to the /l. However, if I zoom in:

Actually the /a/n space is bigger than the /n/d space. (70 units between /a/n and 65 between /n/d.) Is that an optical distortion, though?

I'm not claiming the spacing is perfect, but the /o is at least centered here.

Is it me, or is there some kind of smoothing/rounding/subpixel-grey-thing going on?

Looking at the PDF in Acrobat Pro, I see a bunch of similar but different issues. Here is Acrobat at the top and Preview at the bottom, both allegedly at 100% zoom factor:

The sizes are obviously different. In the Acrobat version, the positioning of the overshoot letters /e, /b, /o etc. seems to be lower - maybe that's a hinting problem? (I'm just using autohinting at present.) In the Acrobat version, the /b/y spacing of "by" seems loose; /m/o of "most" is very tight, but when zoomed in the /o sits nicely between /m and /s.

Obviously I could zoom in to avoid the problem but I know that makes you want to space things tighter. Are there some software or settings I can use to make a reliable proof on screen, or am I condemned to collaborating in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest? Or do I just need glasses?

James Puckett

Buy a 5k iMac. $2,000 is a bargain for all the time you’ll save.

That said, if a font is intended for use on paper, you still need to print it and test it.

Craig Eliason

Physically zoom out: roll your desk chair back a few feet!

Ray Larabie

I always test with low-res fuzz. Export at well over double your target resolution. Make a Photoshop action to bicubic scale smooth to your target screen resolution.