Font Different in InDesign & Pages

Question

Hello.  I'm new to InDesign and this forum, but I'm having a problem and thought somebody might be able to help.
The problem is with a book I've laid out and am in the process of printing in InDesign CS4 (for Mac)...The typeface (Baskerville) looks different in InDesign than it does in Apple Pages or MS Word.  I'm using the same typeface at the same size.  Neither is bold or italic.  The difference, which is much more pronounced on the printed page than onscreen, seems to be mostly in the thickness of the letters.  In Pages and Word, most of the lines are thin and there's a large contrast between thin and thick lines.  In InDesign, the thin lines seem thickened and there's less contrast, as if the text were semibold.
This is disappointing, because I greatly prefer the way the text looks in Pages and Word.
Is this an issue that anybody else has come across?
Thanks for the help,
Ben

Answer 1

bennnh wrote:
Hello.  I'm new to InDesign and this forum, but I'm having a problem and thought somebody might be able to help.
The problem is with a book I've laid out and am in the process of printing in InDesign CS4 (for Mac)...The typeface (Baskerville) looks different in InDesign than it does in Apple Pages or MS Word.  I'm using the same typeface at the same size.  Neither is bold or italic.  The difference, which is much more pronounced on the printed page than onscreen, seems to be mostly in the thickness of the letters.  In Pages and Word, most of the lines are thin and there's a large contrast between thin and thick lines.  In InDesign, the thin lines seem thickened and there's less contrast, as if the text were semibold.
This is disappointing, because I greatly prefer the way the text looks in Pages and Word.
Is this an issue that anybody else has come across?
Thanks for the help,
Ben
Because InDesign treats text characters like a hybrid of text as you know it, and also as objects - that is, a character has a path around it (like an outline or border) and a fill inside the path - it's possible to set a line property for the path that's independent of the fill. (Sometimes the path is called "stroke;" a bit ambiguous, because applying a line property to a path, such as thickness, color, pattern, and some others, is called "adding a stroke to a path," or simply "stroking a path.")
What this means for your situation is that if the paths of the text characters have picked up a stroke property, they'll look thicker and blockier; open spaces in letters like o, c, e, a, and so on, will fill in. Select some text and check its stroke property anywhere the stroke can be measured, such as the Stroke panel, or the Character Color property pane of the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles panels.
The washed-out lower-contrast may be due to the setting of the Preferences setting for Appearance of Black. I think it defaults to Rich Black rather than 100% Black.
These setting differences may occur with text that's created in another application and placed/imported into InDesign.
Look up stroke characters and appearance of black in InDesign help.
EDIT: I forgot to say that usually you want no stroke (zero points) on text. The appearance of black is more a personal taste issue.
HTH
Regards,
Peter Gold
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