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Designer: Do default kerning pairs in a font work?


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Hi,

I would like to know if Affinity Designer minds the default kerning pairs that the creator of a font might have saved with the font? There is no mention of kerning in the help document, according to a keyword search, but there is this:

  • Quote

    Use Default—sets the character tracking to the font's default setting.

    This sounds like this passage from the Affinity Publisher help document

  • Quote

    By default, Publisher applies the kerning tables that the font designer has set for the font.

    Is is the same thing in both applications? Does Affinity Designer read the kerning tables in the font?

I ask because I am using Clip Studio Paint for lettering, but it does not have sufficient features for autokerning nor does it read the kerning tables in a font. But it can export a psd file with the text layers as text. And Affinity Designer can read psd files with text layers. So, I thought, if Affinity Designer reads the kerning tables, even just opening the files in Designer would actually apply those to the layers wouldn't it?

Any details on this would be much appreciated.

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Yes, I would expect Designer to honor the font's kerning tables, just as Publisher does, when you add text to a document.

However, when you load an existing document, I am not sure whether the default kerning would be used, or the kerning specified by the document. So I'm not sure what would happen with your file from Clip Studio Paint. That might depend on how it constructs the text layer, and what it specifies for the kerning/tracking.

Do you have Affinity Designer? If so, you could look at the text in Clip Studio Paint and make a screenshot showing the letter spacing. Then export a PSD file, open the PSD in Designer, and compare the letter spacing you see there with what you saw in Clip Studio Paing. You could also create a new document and type some text using Designer, and see how it compares with what Clip Studio Paint shows, and what you saw in the PSD when using Designer.

Or if you don't have Designer, you could install the free 10-day trial and do the comparison. You can find it at https://affin.co/designertrial (be sure to choose the right version for your OS).

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
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Hi,

thanks for your reply!

Yes, I have the complete Affinity Suite, so I can test this. Your test suggestions make a lot of sense, so I will check this and report back. I just wanted to make sure I actually got the right idea from the passage in the help document, because as a matter of fact it does not actually mention kerning as such and thus I wasn't sure what to expect.

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For what its worth, the AD Character Panel help topic says

  • Kerning—controls the kerning (distance) between characters. Auto will automatically kern characters by default. Positive values give expanded kerning, negative values give condensed kerning. This setting is expressed in permilles, i.e. thousandths of an em space.

 I take this to mean that the "Auto" default will use the kerning built into the font. Auto is indicated in the field either by the "Auto" text or by "(0 ‰)"

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
A
ll 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Well, thanks for finding this, because each time I use the search box with the word "kerning" there is no results!

 

Edit: and does anyone know the exact difference between kerning and tracking?

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24 minutes ago, mkayi said:

and does anyone know the exact difference between kerning and tracking?

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/trackingKerning.html

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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41 minutes ago, mkayi said:

Edit: and does anyone know the exact difference between kerning and tracking?

Tip: for a lot of these terms a quick web search will often tell you want you want to know. For example, just the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning explains the difference simply in just a few words.

For a 'deep dive' into the subject see for example https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/kerning.html.

Both links were in the first few results of a Google search on the word "kerning."

That also included https://www.postprepress.com.au/leading-kerning-and-tracking/

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
A
ll 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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5 hours ago, mkayi said:
Quote

By default, Publisher applies the kerning tables that the font designer has set for the font.

Is is the same thing in both applications? Does Affinity Designer read the kerning tables in the font?

Of course. If not, text would appear differently in the two apps and text flow could change if you switch between the two personas. But not every font delivers this kerning pairs, and if, some for more characters than others.

In this sample of three visually similar fonts the text cursor gets moved and the kerning field shows the according values. Between green characters its different than 0. This also illustrates that having them in a font is not necessarily an attribute of higher quality.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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8 hours ago, R C-R said:

Tip: for a lot of these terms a quick web search will often tell you want you want to know. For example, just the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning explains the difference simply in just a few words.

For a 'deep dive' into the subject see for example https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/kerning.html.

Both links were in the first few results of a Google search on the word "kerning."

That also included https://www.postprepress.com.au/leading-kerning-and-tracking/

Hi and thanks for the links. You're right, that would have better been a search than a question. I guess after being unlucky in my searches with these terms only in combination with application names it no longer occured to me that the basic terms are easy to look up

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