PDF made in Lightroom Book Module like a photograph?

[DotP]

Lightroom Version Number

7.5

Operating System

I may distribute my book as a PDF. I've made PDFs both through Blurb and right out of Lightroom. I'm using three fonts (Perpetua, Optima, and Tangerine) which may not be on viewers' devices. Will the PDF be unchangeable—the viewer will see the original fonts and format no matter if their device has those fonts or not? If there was any font substitution or fauxing, the format and of course the design would be messed up. Is the PDF like a photograph? What about the one made by Blurb? I've noticed that one can copy and paste text from Blurb's PDF, and do a search easily, but not from the Lightroom PDF, but the LR one is better quality.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

Is the PDF like a photograph?

More or less. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. The original purpose was to create a document that was independent from the OS and the Printer and display/print exactly the same whatever the couple OS/Printer is.
This especially true for fonts which can be not present on the destination system. So yes, the PDF document can be somewhat compared to a "photo" of the document (it's not exectly that, of course). So if doesn't matter if the font is present or not, you will always see the text with the same "look".

 

[DotP]

Yes, I understand that is what a PDF is supposed to do. I would like it always to have the same "look". Once I designed special signs in Spanish and English for a Free General Store. I sent the files to someone to print, and they printed with a different font because her computer did not have the font I used in the design. So there are different forms of PDF. The one made in the Lightroom book module presumably is different than one made from a word processing program or the one made my Blurb when you send them your book file. I'd like to know how it is different and be assured the font won't change on other systems.

 

[Hal P Anderson]

You could do an experiment. Get a distinctive font off the web, install it, make a test book through Lightroom using that font, delete that font from your computer and then see how the book displays. After you're done, you'll have a definitive answer.

 

[DotP]

I tried your idea. I downloaded a font not in my computer, made a little PDF, deleted the font, restarted my computer, and opened the PDF. It looked exactly as it did originally. This is good news.

An Adobe support person suggested I send a PDF they can try on different devices with different operating systems and font collections. I made a PDF which included the test above, two pages of the PDF made in Lightroom, and a page of a PDF made by Blurb. I sent screen shots of each page, so they can compare.

The support person also found out that a PDF made in Lightroom does not give an option to edit, so it's different than standard PDFs. I'm getting in water above my head here, but I think that may mean it can't be easily altered.