I am asked to "fix" my music PDF file in AF Publisher and it mucks up my fonts.

[Mark Langford]

About a year ago, I used the FUTURA font in my title and when I clicked on "fix" PDF, AFP2 added a carriage return for each word.  Yesterday I encountered a new issue, all the dynamics are wrong. The final note should have a dynamic marking of mp. After clicking on "fix", they all went wonky instead. 

iMac >>> Music created in Sibelius. Exported to PDF. Imported into AFP2. Asked to click on "fix" >>> Resulting font problem.

[stokerg]

Hi @Mark Langford and Welcome to the Forums,

Do you still have FUTURA installed?

Which PDF Preset and Compatibility setting are you using when exporting to PDF from Affinity?  By default, the Preflight checker for a placed Passthrough PDF, is looking for issues when exporting to PDF/X1-a:2003, so if you aren't exporting to that format of PDF, then you might not even need to do the Fix part of it.  To Edit the Preflight Profile see here and you can change the Passthrough setting from PDF/X1-a:2003 to the correct compatibility setting you are exporting to.

 

[Mark Langford]

Hi. Futura is installed on my iMac (and Norfolk Text Std). Sibelius mentions that the PDF is version 1.4 (Acrobat 5). I don't have a choice. 

"Font embedding PDF files exported from Sibelius always embed all of the fonts required to display the file correctly on another computer (subject to any restrictions placed on third-party fonts that may prohibit embedding), so you can send your files to any recipient with confidence, even somebody who doesn’t have Sibelius."

Okay, I think I have it now. I have the Sibelius PDF 1.4 going to AFP2, which is set on PDF/X1-a:2003. The "fix" stuffs it up and I can't export to PDF/X-4. If I change the setting on the PDF Passthrough from PDF/X1-a:2003 to PDF 1.4, everything seems fine. I exported the AFP2 file to PDF/X-4 and now everything seems to be back to normal.

Cheers

[lacerto]

In which way do you need to "fix" the scores? 

If you open a Sibelius-created PDF v1.4 file in Publisher, you need to have all Sibelius notation fonts installed on your computer to have Publisher render the text (and notation) correctly.

If you place a Sibelius-created PDF 1.4 file in Publisher, and leave the placement mode at its default value ("Passthrough"), you should make sure that you also export using PDF v1.4 or later non-PDF/X-based export method, since all PDF/X-based export methods will rasterize non-PDF/X-based placed PDF content left in "Passthrough" mode.

If you let Affinity app to "Interpret" placed content (which the "Fix" operation of Publisher Preflight does), you need to have all fonts embedded in the placed PDF installed and make sure that the fonts also get correctly mapped. 

Whenever you place PDF content for "Interpretation", you cannot edit the content, so if your intention was to edit the content, you need to open the Sibelius-created files instead of placing them.

Note, too, that Sibelius files are in RGB color mode. You should ask your printer if it is ok to have them in RGB color mode (where black is RGB 0, 0, 0). This is important, since if you export interpreted ("fixed") placed RGB PDF content to CMYK, all RGB 0,0,0 content will be converted to four-color-black, which you probably do not want. When you export "passthrough" content, the original RGB color mode is retained (unless the content gets inadvertently rasterized), but this may be unacceptable to the printer who expects the file to be in CMYK color mode (and using K-ink only).

There are ways to do a properly created K-only PDF export from a Sibelius RGB content, and it basically involves exporting to Grayscale color mode either Interpreted content, or opened content (or opening the content and converting everything to K100, and then exporting to CMYK). What needs to be done much depends on what you need to edit, and what your printer expects.