Extracting font information from PDF files, Free Digital Strategy Advice

Recently, I was sent a PDF of a marketing poster which a client had asked me to turn into a HTML email. The design firm who had produced the poster had used a non web standard font (i.e. not Arial, Verdana or the like) but I still wanted to use it as my primary typeface in my font stack (the CSS font-family rule) and allow the typeface to degrade for those users who didn't have it installed on their system. The problem was that I didn't recognise the font!

Having exhausted all other avenues, I turned to our team of web designers here at Deep Blue Sky, who promptly showed me the following technique to extract font information from a PDF:

Open your PDF.
Go to TOOLS -> Advanced Editing and select the "TouchUp Text Tool".
Click on the text that you wish to extract the typeface from and a bounding box should appear.
Highlight a portion of the text and right click to bring up a menu. Select "Properties".
Information about your font should be displayed under the "Text" tab, including the font name. Easy!

The one issue with this technique is that - to the best of my knowledge - you need to have Adobe Acrobat Professional (I used Version 8.1.2) to use the advanced editing functionality.If hope you find this useful, and if you do be sure to comment.

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Write a comment.

Responses. (38)

t s

tom

latex

good stuff, useful for fonts in documents from latex!
S T

Stephan

Thanks!

Great tutorial and just what I was looking for. The properties even give you the stroke weight. Thank you!
s s

stefan

Extract font from pdf

You are able to extract fonts from PDF with Online Font Converter
M M

Marko

recognizeing fonts in pdf

What if font is converted to outlines before saving to pdf?
M L

Magnus

Use Word?

If you just copy the text from the PDF (I used Adobe Reader), and paste it into Word the font-name will show. But the font-type is of course incorrect!
R F

Russ

Thanks

Thank you, really nice tip. Works just great!
M C

Matt

Thanks!

Perfect - I am also extracting from a PDF and turning into an HTML email. Exactly what I needed!
C R

Caron

Thanks!

your post helped me to solve this exact same problem!
B K

Blaz

Thanks!

Thanks 4 the help,

I really needed it!

So simple, so hidden...
S O

Sheila

PDF font properties

Hi

This was exactly what I needed today.

Thanks

Sheila
d l

diana

used it to solve mystery

like magic - thanx! I had thought impossible to duplicate what looked like an original hand-drawn text - this showed my it was just a rare font.
R R

Rob

Simple!

Just what I needed! Thank you!
F G

Felix

PDF font extract

Very interesting method you have presented here. I am a graphic designer and I work mainly for auto industry. They use special fonts for every icon in the car. I had this problem a few months ago. At that time it was very little information about this subject online. After a lot of researching I have developed a procedure to extract any type of font embedded in any pdf file. I will present my method on my blog on http://pdffontextract.blogspot... so people can use it and solve their problems. Glad to help you guys!
j a

jonathan

CSS3 & HTML5, Digital Marketing, Analytics & SEO

this is good
I L

Iara Falcao

font information on PDF file

It was just what I needed! All morning I was trying to figure that up when I decided to go to Google and I found you Thank you!
P N

Paul

Extracting font info

Thanks. Just the job and a big help.
a s

alexandra

many thanks for helping figure out font style on a pdf

You rock!!
F T

Fep

Help Me in this

the things what u shared is useful for me. thanks.

actually i got a sanskrit book and for the same procedure it display as "there is no such system file" will u help u outta this??
B B

Bas

get fontname in pdf

Never knew you could just select and see which font(s) are used inside a PDF. Thanks for sharing!
M B

Minerva

Extracting a font from a PDF

This was exactly what I needed. Thanks so much!
L A

Lisa

Extracting font information from pdf files

Yeeeeeiiiiii!! thanks so much! great tip!!
p s

pat

Finding a font size in a PDF document.

This document was very helpful. Thanks for posting it.
A L

ANTÓNIO

Just what I needed!

Thanks
A B

Andy

Great Job!

thanks bud...just got me out of a jam!
T S

Thomas

Alternative way: extract the Font file.

If you don't have access to Acrobat Professional it might help to extract the font file. An online PDF extractor like http://www.extractpdf.com might help in this situation.
K S

Kumar

Unable to find out font type, size in PDF file

I am using Adobe Reader v9 and Adobe Acrobat Pro v10 and trying to find out how to determine the font size and type for a certain piece of text. I tried following your steps but could not find Advanced Editing option in Tools tab for both of these 2 tools. Please let me know to get around this.
D B

Daniel

Font Converter

This is a wonderful and informative blog. This blog gives us lots of useful information to us. Thanks for sharing and keep blogging.
J L

Jes

Pinpointing font

Hi David,

like yourself I did not know this. But now I do, thanks to you and your boss. Right now it has saved me a lot of time, not searching my entire list of fonts comparing with a dump of the PDF font, inside InDesign, which is the method I have been using until now. Crossing the river to get water....

So - thank you very much :-)

Jes
C I

Christian

Big Help

Thanks so much for this...helps me a lot this morning. Thank you.
s v

skin

this was borderline religious experience

haha

changing the world man. bigtime thanks.
v p

vaibhav

font info from pdf

thanx man
L S

Latika

Thanks!!

I actually applied this on the pdf that i had with me...and yes it worked!! thank you so much!!
J A

Jhonnel

Comment

In Adobe Reader, do File > Properties > Fonts tab.Then that's it. No need for such...
a l

atheaos

Slightly different in Acrobat 10

Thanks for the tip! In Acrobat 10.1.7 instead of "Advanced Editing" you'll find it under "Tools", then "Content", then "Edit Document Text".
A .

Anna

Big Thanks!

You just made my day!
R K

R

Perfect

Agree with ATHEAOS, otherwise great! Thx.
S S

Sumit

Better Option

Better Option would be to just click on edit and place your cursor on the word whose font info you want to extract. On the right hand side Acrobat populates all the info.( i am using Acrobat DC)
N R

Nancy

Font info from PDF

I have been looking for an answer to this question for a long time. Thank you for sharing it with the world!

Extracting font information from PDF files