From the course: Type Tips
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Metrics vs. optical kerning
- [Instructor] Welcome to Type Tips, and in this episode I'm going to be talking about automatic kerning. In InDesign, in Illustrator, and in Photoshop, there are two types of automatic kerning. Automatic kerning is the adjustment of space between letter pairs. There is metrics kerning, and there is optical kerning. Which should you use? Firstly, the difference between the two, metrics looks at the font metrics that are built into the typeface. Some typeface have many font metrics, and some will have none at all. Optical kerning disregards the metrics, if there are any, and just looks at the character shapes. For the most part, when you're working with your body type, you can use whichever one you prefer. And really you need to try these out because it's going to depend upon how many font metrics there are in the typeface. But the one that looks best is the one to use. That said, there are certain scenarios where one type of automatic kerning is definitely preferable to another. The…
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