embed-fonts

name	embed-fonts
description	Force-embed all fonts in a PDF — fixes the most common cause of "looks fine on screen, wrong on the printer" issues. If the printer doesn't have the font, it substitutes a fallback and layout breaks. Triggers on phrases like "embed fonts", "fix font issues", "fonts looking wrong on print".

Embed All Fonts

Re-process a PDF so every font used is fully embedded.

Why it matters

Non-embedded fonts trigger printer-side substitution. Common substitutions (Arial → Helvetica → Liberation Sans) cause subtle width changes that ripple into reflowed lines, broken tables, and shifted page breaks.

Inputs

• Input PDF path (required).
• Output path (optional) — defaults to <input>-embedded.pdf.

Diagnosis (pre-check)

pdffonts input.pdf

Look at the emb and sub columns:

• yes yes — fully embedded subset (fine).
• yes no — fully embedded full font (fine).
• no no — NOT embedded (problem).

Tooling

Ghostscript with -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=true re-runs the PDF through pdfwrite and embeds whatever it can find on the system.

Recipe

gs -o output.pdf \
   -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
   -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
   -dEmbedAllFonts=true \
   -dSubsetFonts=true \
   -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
   -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
   input.pdf

/prepress preset includes high-quality embedding settings.

Verification

pdffonts output.pdf

Every row should show emb=yes. If any are still no, the font isn't installed on the system — install via fc-list / apt install, then re-run.

Caveats

• If the source PDF references a font that isn't installed locally and isn't embedded, gs cannot embed it and will substitute. The output will still print "consistently" but with the substitution baked in — verify visually.
• Some commercial fonts have embedding restrictions in their license; gs respects flags. If embedding is denied, gs warns.

Output

Font-embedded PDF.