Do We Have the Possibility to Enlarge Print?
- Bitmap fonts, also called raster fonts, are those where the characters are made up of pixels represented by a bitmap. When available computation power is low, bitmap fonts have the advantage of attaching very little information with the character, and the computer can draw the character’s pixels quickly. Bitmap fonts were common as screen fonts for the initial waves of desktop computers. Scaling up, however, is poor with these types of fonts, even within a word processing or layout program, limiting their use in print.
- Bitmap fonts require different character sets for specific point sizes, such as 12, 18, 24 and 30 point. Normally the highest point size for a bitmap display font is 72 point. Enlarging the text size within a program beyond 72 point can result in jagged edges as the characters become pixelated. Incremental enlargements between the set point sizes, for instance to 20 point, can be done, but even then there can be a loss of quality.
- An outline font acts like a vector graphic, where lines and curves are defined by mathematical descriptions, called Bézier curves. These fonts within a document or layout program can be scaled upward without loss of quality. Since you don’t need different type sets for different point sizes, incremental changes of type size is also done without loss of quality. Outline fonts do require more computing power to be placed in a document, which is why early desktop computers regularly used bitmap fonts instead. But as computers advanced, outline fonts became more common. Bitmap fonts PostScript style such as TrueTye and Open Type are generally outline fonts.
- For text-only documents using outline fonts, scaling up the text when sending to a desktop printer will generally not result in a noticeable loss of quality. If the document, however, also contains a bitmap image, the image will lose quality when enlarged.
