Type and Font

From Online Printing

Martin Allergens What About Type? Any type or text that’s part of a bit mapped image is no different than the rest of that image, and it will print with the same resolution of the image file. (Note: while Photo shop versions 6 and later support clean, vector type, you can’t print it that way without first going through a Post Script printer or interpreter, or a file conversion to PDF format and printing from Adobe Acrobat (see more about Post Script and PDFs in ). Although other factors such as paper surface quality and the kind of printing technology used can definitely have an impact, it’s the printer’s resolution addressable, not apparent that mainly determines the quality of the printed, bit mapped type. A high dip (dots per inch) will generally yield higher quality type with smoother edges while a low dip produces type with ragged edges (see 2.9). 2.9 Printer red solution affects the type quality. Here, type was scanned in Bitmap mode to show the differences. If you’re printing from a drawing or page-layout program, the rules change somewhat. Adobe Illustrator and In Design (version 1.5 and later) don’t require a free-standing Post Script interpreter for good-looking type. Other programs like Quark X Press need Post Script font support from a utility program like Adobe Type Manager (ATM) if your operating system doesn’t already have Post Script font support built in. In any of these cases, if you’re printing through an ink jet's native printer driver, the type quality will still vary with the resolution of the printer. However, as soon as you bring in a Post Script interpreter, things improve significantly.