How to convert Type 3 font to Type 1 font in PDF format

Question

I have a PDF with a built-in Type 3 font. How can I convert this Type 3 font to Type 1 font?

Thanks, Balaji

Answer 1

You may not be able to; Type 3 fonts can contain any PostScript; Type 1 fonts can contain only a limited subset.

Answer 2

It has been many years since they asked about this, but I am writing for everyone who has come across this problem (like me). The best solution is to restore the settings PDF to avoid type 3 fonts. For example, if you make your shapes using matplotlib, then you can follow the instructions here: http://phyletica.org/matplotlib-fonts/

If it is not possible to recover the PDF file or if it takes too much time, I also found that using convert (located in imagemagick ) may help. As others have said, you can lose information, but this will work in most cases: convert example.pdf example.pdf

Answer 3

Other answers suggest re-generating from source files to output type 1 fonts instead of type 3 fonts. This is probably the best solution when possible, but in some cases it may not be possible (for example, if the source files or the generation program are unavailable for some either reason). Let me suggest an alternative approach ..

How to "convert" Type 3 fonts

I managed to "convert" Type 3 fonts to a PDF image by opening the file in Adobe Acrobat Pro, and then printing the file in Adobe PDF (a virtual printer provided by Adobe Distiller, part of the Professional package). I am using Adobe Pro Suite version 11 (circa 2012), but newer versions can probably do the same. This action sounds cool, but in fact it gives you the ability to force the display of fonts in the new PDF.

The default output parameters in my version were sufficient to create a PDF file that is visually indistinguishable from the original PDF file, but in which all type 3 fonts are displayed directly as vector graphics (i.e. there is NO font use in the output PDF file) . The Acrobat print dialog (at least in my version for Windows) also has the Properties and Advanced buttons, where you can make all kinds of detailed adjustments to the output. These include things like a list of Type 1 fonts for embedding (and settings for partial embedding), output compatibility (I used Acrobat 6 / PDF 1.5), optional down-sampling of images, etc.

Please note that this procedure is likely to significantly increase the output PDF file. In my case, offensive text using type 3 fonts was only a few dozen labels in a quarter-page drawing, and the PDF file size increased about 2 times during this conversion; however, the absolute size remained below 50 kB, so the extension did not matter for my purposes. For a larger document or a document with a large amount of text using type 3 fonts, the extension may be more pronounced, therefore YMMV.