371 Determine type specs in a PDF

- [Instructor] Here's the original InDesign file. It's a handbook of a bunch of pages long. 23 pages long. And I have been exporting like mad to PDF. And now, I want to see what is the one that I want to keep. The problem is that I have two handbook variations, and I'm not sure the one that I want. I mean, over here, I can tell if I come down to the type and I click in it, I can tell it's nine point. But here, I can't tell which one of these is nine point type.

Or another situation might be that your freelancer, or your employee sends you two or three PDFs and says, which one do you like, and you can see that there's a difference between the type size, and you wanna be able to tell him, I like the one with eight point type instead of nine point. Or I like the one that you did in Myriad, instead of Helvetica. How can you tell what is the font size and the font type in a PDF, is the essential question. And I'm gonna show you a couple different ways that you can do that. So I guess this isn't really an InDesign secret, but because this happens to me a lot, and all the PDFs I deal with are exported from InDesign, I find it a very handy technique to use, and that I think that you'll appreciate as well.

Alright, there's two ways to tell what is the font and size of type used in a particular place in a PDF. Now you might be thinking, oh, you just look at the properties and it will tell you the fonts. Well, yeah, that's true, if you go to file properties, it will tell you the fonts that are embedded here. But it doesn't tell you the size, or which it happens to be used where your cursor is. I'm gonna zoom in a bit so we can see this a little better. So here, one way to tell, is to go to print production.

Just type print in the tool finder here. And you wanna open up the object inspector, which is available from output preview. I know it's kind of buried. I wish they'd have an entry here that just said output inspector. Or object inspector, rather. But they don't. So click this and then this is the inspector. We wanna change it right here to where it says object inspector. Why? Because now I can click anywhere and it tells me what is happening underneath where I clicked. Here I can see the name of the font and that this is size 10.

Okay, that's size 10. What's this one here? This is bold, size 11. And so I can get a lot of information about various parts of this PDF that I can then reflect back when I add comments or talk to my freelancer. Let's look at handbook two. We'll just keep this up and I'll press command or control plus to zoom in a bit. Around the same page in version two, when I click here, aha, this is size nine. This is the one that came from the InDesign document I just had open with the nine point type.

Okay. So that's one way to tell the font and the size used anywhere in a PDF. Go to print production, click, output preview and switch to the object inspector. Got that? Now there's a easier and faster way. Maybe not as exact and that's simply to pretend that you're going to edit the PDF. So type edit and you can see there's one for form, one for object, one for edit PDF, you wanna edit PDF, click that and then you get these little boxes around all your text box.

Just click inside the type and look over here on the right, and that tells you right there. This is nine point and that's the font. It doesn't tell you the actual leading. It gives you a multiple of the type size. So this is 1.28 line spacing. Unfortunately, you have to figure that out for yourself. But at least you get lots of other information. Let's check out this guy over here. Again, you want to come over here, get out of print production. Look for edit PDF.

Click inside the type and that tells you its 10 point. Okay, so now you have two ways to quickly find the type face and size and even leading in any PDF.