[Les Nemeth]

I didn’t see that you said you only have Elements and it does not do CMYK. I did not know that. In that case, AI will not convert your images to CMYK. You need to do it in a program that can do that (like PS).

[Les Nemeth]

The reason they recommend doin most of your work in RGB, because it has a much wider gamut and as such, more colors are available. Not only that, but various Effect and Filter features only work in RGB mode and are not available once you switch to CMYK. Once you are done with RGB, you can switch your document to CMYK. However, if you are not using Effects in your project, you can work in CMYK just fine.

This does not apply to imported images, however. You need to change the color mode of your images to CMYK before you send your work to the printer.

If you link your images, you can change the color mode later, before you send it to print. But if you embed the image(s) it’s better to change it to CMYK first, cuz chaces are you are going to forget it and you will send a CMYK document with an embedded RGB image to the printer. And then they will send it back to you to change it.

[Les Nemeth]

You can’t do that. Whatever the box selection touches, will be selected.

Use the Ctrl key + click to select individual items within the group.

[Les Nemeth]

It’s exactly what it says. You have to have a single, closed path.

You cannot have a compound path neither a photograph (that’s not a path) to distort your object.

A single path, by definition is a path that does not contain multiple paths. (Now that’s what I call a definition! Hehehe… 🙂 A compound path by definition is a path that contain multiple paths combined into a single path. For example you take a big circle and place a small circle inside of it so that they don’t touch. Now you make this into a “single” path by Object > Compound Path > Make. This would be a compound path. You cannot use such a shape for distortion. Another example would be a letter ‘b’. The inside of it is hollow. So it has an outer path and an inner circle/oval (so these two make a compound path) and in-between these two paths are colored black.

For example, to make a single path, take a pencil, put it down on a piece of paper, and draw a path without:
a. lifting your pencil and
b. crossing the pencil lines you already made.
And finally, close your path by moving the end of the line where you started. Now your path is closed (the ends meet) and the lines don’t cross each other.

In AI, in order to qualify as a closed path, the endpoints must actually be welded/joined. In other words, you cannot just move the end anchor point to the top of the beginning anchor point. They must be welded or joined.

Examples for BASIC closed paths are circle, ellipse, triangle, rectangle, star, polygon. Of course you can draw any type of closed paths using the pen tool as long as the lines are not crossed and the end point is joined to the start point.

[Les Nemeth]

Sarah, you need to sit down and start searching. Don’t mean to be critical but there’s a lot of information about it. I don’t know why overprint preview works or what exactly is that. However, it took me less then 3 minutes to find a whole slew of information. Such as…

Start with the Help file.
The Help file took me to this site:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/Acrobat/9.0/3D/WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109794195ff-7bb4.w.html

At the bottom of that page, there are a few print related links. Checked out a few of them quickly. One of them took me to this site:
https://www.adobe.com/designcenter/cs3/articles/cs3_printguide.html

(Note that this refers to a CS3 printing guide, but there’s also a CS4 printing guide. And I’m sure that the overprint preview did not change a whole lot, if at all, in CS4.)

In that printing guide PDF (https://www.adobe.com/designcenter/cs3/articles/cs3_printguide/CS3printguide_low.pdf) on page 11 I got the following info:
“…Use the Overprint Preview in Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat 8 Professional, and Adobe Reader to check the interactions of objects using blending modes. Activating Overprint Preview in these components generates a more realistic display of artwork,
providing the opportunity to catch objects that may image differently from the way they appear when viewed in the normal, composite view.”

As you can see this was all under 3 minutes or so. It’s not hard. You could say that all this info still doesn’t make much sense to you, which is ok. In that case, search and find out more about it, until you find as much info as you need.

Good luck!

[Les Nemeth]

Just to elaborate on this a little more, I just searched for ‘Copperplate Light’ which is one of the missing fonts.

Turns out, there are Copperplate Light from ‘EF’ (Elnser+Flake) and from ‘URW’. They are different makers. So if the design was created using Copperplate Light from EF, but you have Coopperplate Light from URW, it won’t work. You need the SAME font from the SAME maker/manufacturer for it to work.

[Les Nemeth]

Well, you have to be 100% sure. 99 is not enough. Look and see. Test. Type in something and verify that they are indeed the same fonts.

There are fonts that are similar sounding in name, not to mention perfect look alikes (maybe just a very small difference in look) but they are made/designed by a different manufacturer.

So you might need to open up the font file and see if the font is actually from the same manufacturer. As an example, I know that there is Futura and Univers available from different manufacturers. Not to mention the fact that at my work another designer is working on a Mac, I work on a PC. So even though we both have Univers installed, the documents are not compatible because the fonts are from a different manufacturer and when we open up the design in InDesign, it doesn’t find the font. Even though by name (Univers) the font is there and it IS Univers.

Another thing is, that Adobe programs sometimes install fonts at startup for a specific app (like Photoshop) and they are removed when the app shuts down. So you might have the font available in PS, but crazy as it might sound, AI might not use or install the same fonts. This used to happen with older versions, not sure how CS5 behaves. Now, I’m just trying to troubleshoot here, so bear in mind the various possibilities.

So that’s why it’s important to make sure that when AI is running, the ACTUAL fonts that were used in the design are installed and available.

[Les Nemeth]

Well, it seems the solution is easy and I can tell you two different ones.

The first one is, that you have to install the missing fonts in your system. The fonts are embedded into the PDF document, so you can see it correctly in Acrobat. However, if you want to open the PDF in a program where you can edit the font, you have to have the fonts installed in your system (Copperplate-Light, Eccentric, MontereyBT-Regular).

The other solution is, and this is if you don’t have the missing fonts at your disposal, is to export the PDF from Acrobat as an EPS file. This will outline the fonts and you’ll have them as vector, so you can open it no prollem in AI. However, since the fonts will become vector outlines, you won’t be able to edit them. Unless you use a different font and re-type the copy.

[Les Nemeth]

In Acrobat, under File > Properties, you can check the embedded fonts. Just curious if all fonts are embedded OK?

Won’t you upload an actual PDF that’s giving you problems so we can have a look.

[Les Nemeth]

Acrobat is picky about color management. I remember I had something similar happen a while back. It’s not only RGB vs CMYK but depending on the issue it can be related to your Acrobat’s preferences setting. Don’t know any specific, just go through your preferences and check various color related settings.

Other things to try: experimenting with various document color profiles.

There are also transparency flattener settings that can influence results.

There’s a whole slew of topics you can find about this issue if you just google and I bet you could find a solution pretty fast.