Can anyone help me how to adjust a kerning of an existing font, say an OTF file. I don’t want to make any other adjustments than just to increase all characters’ kerning. I know some of you might suggest that I should just use the program’s (e.g. photoshop, ms word etc.) kerning adjustment to get the desired look, but we have a program that we are using now that doesn’t support kerning adjustment. So we decided to adjust the kerning directly to the font file.
Any help or guidance will be appreciated. Thank you!
Is it an open source font? If not, you are probably not allowed to do that in the first place.
Adjustment of spacing and kerning to an existing font is possible, but also a broad topic since it involves many different things. I suggest you read the handbook chapter 9, Spacing and Kerning.
You are using the term ‘kerning’ but it appears to me you want the font to have an overall looser fit. If that is the case, the term ‘letterspace’ would be the right one to use, causing less confusion to the reader here.
And, as @Tosche said above, it can be complicated.
My apologies for the confusion. But I’m referring to Kerning, not letter spacing. Usually, folks tend to have a similar understanding of Kerning to Letter Spacing.
I actually just want to change each of the letter’s kerning.
That would be letterspacing in my world. In the case of the word example you used, I would not expect it to have any kerning at all for a normal font which has correct sidebearings.
Modifying a font that is not declared free to modify is an infringement of license agreement, and that includes letter spacing and kerning. Please be very careful of what font you are dealing with.
Letter spacing is the default spacing of each letter. Kerning is a situational exception you insert to a pair of letters. If you have HTA, the TA might look too loose in the absence of extra adjustment after letter spacing, which is precisely what kerning does.