Text ot Outline - Creating Data

Creating Data

Converting Text to Outlines

Editable text vs Outlined text

When using Illustrator to create your artwork, knowing how to convert text to outlines is an important and essential step! If the fonts are not outlined in your data before you submit it to us, it may cause problems like: fonts changing to different fonts, text not displaying properly, text layers or text boxes shifting in the design or letters getting garbled. This could be problematic!

Text ot Outline - Editable text vs Outlined text 01 Image
Text ot Outline - Editable text vs Outlined text 02 Image
Text ot Outline - Editable text vs Outlined text 03 Image

This is why it is very important to outline all the text in your artwork when saving your print-ready data. When you outline text, you are converting the font into a path, meaning the text is no longer editable. Once it has been made into a path, it becomes a scalable graphic, which can be shrunk down or resized larger - and the quality isn’t affected.

How to outline text in Illustrator?

Converting text to outlines in Illustrator is super easy. It is considered good practice to keep an editable copy of your artwork as an .ai file before you convert the text to outlines. This way you can have an editable version handy, should you need to make any edits or updates to the content in the future.

Before outlining your text, it’s best to check for hidden or locked layers first!

Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 01 Image
  1. Unlock all locked layers.
  2. Show/Unhide any hidden layers.
    *Note: Please delete any hidden or unnecessary layers from your final data.
Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 02 Image
Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 03 Image
  1. The lock has been removed.
  2. The hidden layer will be visible.

Next, from the menu at the top of the screen

Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 04 Image

With your mouse, choose Select,
then click on ALL.

This will select all the unlocked,
visible objects in your artwork.

Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 05 Image
Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 06 Image

Then, with your mouse click on Type, then select Create Outlines.

This will convert any text to paths, making them non-editable, essentially scalable objects.

Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 07 Image

The above text has a blue line underneath it, meaning the text is an editable typeface, not an object. The little blue square at the left end of the line indicates that the text is ranged left.

Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 08 Image
Text ot Outline - outline text in Illustrator 09 Image

When the text is outlined, it no longer is editable. The line beneath is replaced by editable paths (outlines) around the edges of the characters and can be edited as such.

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