Charter font is misrendered at small sizes
The Italic version of the Charter font that comes standard on macOS is misrendered at small sizes by several Adobe programs, including Illustrator and Acrobat.
Steps to reproduce on macOS:
- Create some text in a new document, ideally including the character "A"
- Set the typeface of the text to Charter Italic
- Simply zoom out until the "A" is shown with obvious artefacts. Zooming in again resolves the issue. See attached screenshot of the same text rendered at larger and smaller sizes, for comparison.
Notes:
This affects not just the "A" character, but it's the most noticeable with it. Notably, it affects "s". The artefact appears/disappears at different zoom levels for different characters.
Non-Adobe programs, such as macOS's Preview.app, are not affected.
The problem appears in print as well, though in a less extreme form.
I have been seeing this for years and there are reports of the same issue online.
Version info:
macOS 13.4.1 (but the problem appears on earlier versions as well)
Illustrator 27.7 (but the problem appears with earlier versions as well)
Font version: 14.0d2e1 (as reported by Font Book.app); reported as "System Font"
Szabolcs Horvát
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Independent report of same issue for Acrobat: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253722115