Fuzzy fonts because Ghostscript too old

So you’ve done everything the FAQ has told you that you need, correct fonts properly installed and appearing in the dvips output, but still you get fuzzy character output after distilling with ghostscript.

The problem could arise from too old a version of ghostscript, which you may be using directly, or via a script such as ps2pdf (distributed with ghostscript itself), dvipdf, or similar. Though ghostscript was capable of distillation from version 5.50, that version could only produce bitmap Type 3 output of any font other than the fundamental 35 fonts (Times, Helvetica, etc.). Later versions added ‘complete’ distillation, but it wasn’t until version 6.50 that one could rely on it for everyday work.

So, if your PDF output still looks fuzzy in Acrobat Reader, upgrade ghostscript. The new version should be at least version 6.50, of course, but it’s usually good policy to go to the most recent version (version 8.12 at the time of writing — 2003).

FAQ ID: Q-fuzzy-gs