Hinting Middle Stems

Design
1

Hello Fellow Designers

I am facing a problem that I can’t seem to solve and so I need some help.

I am now on the process of hinting a font, I use the alignment zones and the stem values, I even did some manual hinting on some glyphs and everything is looking great but the horizontal stems on some shapes, like the Uppercase ‘E’. On some pixel sizes, the middle stem doesn’t stay on the optical middle, It seems that it just drops one pixel line creating a very different design (somewhat art Deco :slight_smile: ).

My question is, how do I ensure that the in between horizontal stems stay on the ‘middle’

2

Don’t hint it.

Hinted rasterizing is the process of distorting your letter shapes so they better fit onto the pixel grid and make a crisper image. It is not about preserving your shapes.

2 Likes
3

And there is no way to influence the rasteriser for PostScript outlines in that detail.

4

Ok, So when the AutoHint produces that result, I should autohint and then remove the middle stem hint?

5

Try it, or don’t hint at all.

1 Like