Adobe Ending Support for PostScript Fonts
A technology product lasting nearly 40 years is a massive achievement. In our current disposable culture, where trends end as fast as they start, we can all raise a salute to the venerable PostScript font. Released by Adobe in 1984, it combined with the original Mac, the Apple LaserWriter, and Aldus PageMaker to start the desktop publishing revolution as well as confirm the success of the modern graphical interface and WYSIWYG. But after four decades, the end is here.
Adobe is ending support for PostScript fonts in January 2023. However, support is already fading. Some readers may have noticed the prompts and nudges in Adobe products over the past year. Photoshop CC 2021 already fails to display PostScript fonts and the recently released CC 2022 product suite is stepping up the alerts to ensure customers replace fonts before the products no longer support them. Opening documents containing PostScript fonts in InDesign and Illustrator will present an alert informing you that support is ending. Hunt down the offending fonts and replace them.
Many long time Mac users will remember, maybe not fondly, the days of Adobe Type Manager Deluxe, font suitcases, resource forks, and system crashes due to corrupt or incomplete fonts (remember how challenging it was to keep the screen and printer files together?). I can speak for all Carbon technicians by saying we do not miss the days of Font Doctor and manually synchronizing 1000s of fonts across Mac fleets.
For most of Carbon’s long time creative and graphic design customers, the removal of PostScript font support should not be a significant issue as we have recommended the migration to OpenType fonts for more than a decade. However, for customers with extensive job archives, your old projects (from ~2010 and before) likely contain some PostScript fonts. For the rare customer still using PostScript fonts on active jobs, your time is short. It is time to find a replacement before your workflow grinds to a halt.
What will happen when Adobe drops support? The official notice from Adobe is posted here. In a nutshell, the Adobe products will stop activating PostScript fonts, they will not be visible in font menus, and documents will prompt to replace the font(s) on document open. Please note, certain file formats that support embedding font information, such as EPS and PDF files, will be unaffected by the change. Old PDF documents can be viewed and printed but not edited in applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.
To put this into perspective, Adobe stopped developing PostScript fonts in 1999 when they converted the entire Font Folio collection to OpenType. Since, Adobe has moved fonts to their Creative Cloud subscription, first through Type Kit and now via Adobe Fonts. This evolution makes license management, rights management, and accessibility far easier. Additionally, OpenType is superior in every way. OpenType addressed the many limitations of the PostScript format, including vast expansion of the encoding table (support for more characters), advanced typography features like character alternates and ligatures, multiple language sets, and better support for non-Roman languages.
PostScript has served us well but it is time to move on. As always, if you have questions or concerns about your workflow, reach out to your favorite Carbon technician.