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I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question, but is there a difference in quality between fonts I can download for free and fonts I pay for? When I use some free fonts for photopolymer plates it seems that they are not as smooth and clear as they look on their website.
Thanks!
Yes!
If you want to do first class work, it takes first class tools.
I have been around letterpress and offset printing for 40 years.
The cheap fonts are a get deal until you have a customer that looks at your finish job and returns it because it just doesn’t look great.
If you are printing for fun, and just fun, the free fonts are the best way to go. If you want people to pay you for your work, spend the money.
You can minimize any jaggedness by creating your image at 200% (or more) and then reducing down to the desired size when creating the plate.
Typographically, professional fonts will be much more worthwhile than free ones, in terms of character selection, letterfit, diacritic alignment, consistency in colour between letters etc etc, the list goes on.
However, your free fonts should look as clean on a computer screen as on a photopolymer plate and the problem could lie elsewhere, possibly in film output or platemaking. How are you making your plates/with whom are you getting them made?
Typographically professional fonts will be much more worthwhile than free ones, in terms of character selection, letterfit, diacritic alignment, consistency in colour between letters etc etc, the list goes on.
However, your free fonts should look as clean on a computer screen as on a photopolymer plate and the problem could lie elsewhere, possibly in film output or platemaking. How are you making your plates/with whom are you getting them made?
ptclyde
The reason free fonts are free is because that is all they are worth. Don’t get me wrong, I am quite fond of some of the output of the folks of the early “free font movement” such as Dieter Speffmann, Manfred Klein, Paul Lloyd, etc., but you know this was way back in the last century. A lot has changed in the font world and most of the free stuff is really, really back dated, mainly because it’s harder to do now and the interest has waned. And, like I said, there is a reason it is free. Don’t buy it :—)
Gerald
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com