Enable Optical Kerning on Fonts?

[KC]

Is it possible that we add an option to select the kerning setting for each text box? Or that they are coded to use OPTICAL kerning instead of the default/auto? I notice this frequently on most of our fonts, and avoid so many of them entirely because they become a mess because of the kerning settings. 

Here are two very common/popular/basic fonts and the current kerning settings. The gaps between the A and V are crazy wide and unprofessional-looking. The sans-serif font is also cramming the R and A together. 

Would love to see this option or fix sometime so we can all produce more professional and more finished-looking designs. 

Thanks! 🙂

[PAZP]

Is this what you are referring to? If so, it's in the design tool.

[KC]

I love the letter spacing option (tracking), but that's not the same as actual kerning, where the space between any two letters are adjusted based on their actual width. Letter spacing will increase the space between all letters equally compared to the original font settings. 

Kerning can individually adjust the spacing between each letters. 

Optical kerning settings will help fonts not have inconsistent gaps between individual letters look nicer, because you don't end up with the photos I added above, much larger gaps between some letters compared to others in the the same word.

[PAZP]

Well I learned something new @KC.

Thanks for the explanation. 

[MarkM]

Hi @KC 

Thank you for suggesting this. I will be sure to pass it onto the relevant peoples! 😀

[Connie]

OH YES!!!!! The lack of proper kerning on several fonts drives me nuts!

[Fiorenzo]

Kerning is something you define during the font creation, character by character, AND also for special character combos, like the mentioned AV (or VA). So it's primarily the font you use that may look good (good kerning) or not that good (bad kerning). You see the differences well within the designer, there are fonts that look perfect, whatever you write, and there are fonts that look great in some circumstances but awful in others. Some fonts (mostly decorative cursive fonts such as Roundhand) can't even be correctly centered visually without off-centering the text box.

Not every software can handle specific kerning, and there is software (mostly graphic software, such as Corel Draw) that lets you even manually adjust every character's horizontal position. I doubt this will be an easy task to implement, we don't even have a pretty basic justify text alignment nor a text contour feature.