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When I try to use Adobe Illustrator (CS4) to edit a PDF file produced by LaTeX with several equations in it, Illustrator complains that it can't find the fonts:

The font CMBX10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMMI10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMMI6 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMMI7 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMMI8 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMMIB10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMR10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMR7 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMSY10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMSY6 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font CMSY7 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
The font MSBM10 is missing.  Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.
To preserve appearance, some text has been outlined.

How do I find & install the necessary fonts?

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  • 1
    Have you tried to copy those fonts into the system's font directory?
    – topskip
    Feb 21, 2012 at 10:10
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    @doncherry: Even better: graphicdesign.stackexchange.com
    – Martin Schröder
    Feb 21, 2012 at 10:37
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    @Patrick.Gundlach: this may be insufficient. I think there is a font directory dedicated to Illustrator only once the latter is installed. It is better to drop the fonts you want to use within Illustrator in that folder. I could install the .pfb kpfonts family this way and use it in Illustrator but I cannot remember the exact path.
    – pluton
    Feb 21, 2012 at 10:44
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    @doncherry: You're welcome to move this question wherever you'd like, but to me it seems like a pretty TeX-specific issue.
    – lid
    Feb 21, 2012 at 13:53
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    @doncherry: I would not consider this as off-topic. Basically, it is related to LaTeX font handling and the issue is a general one: What to do regarding fonts, if LaTeX is just a first step in a document production process (e.g., for those, who use TikZ for graphics).
    – Daniel
    Feb 21, 2012 at 15:40

2 Answers 2

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Moving fonts

As Patrick Gundlach and pluton suggest, you can just make the fonts available to Illustrator. They're in your system's texmf, which you can find by running 

kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFDIST

For TeX Live 2011, $TEXMFDIST is by default at

  • Windows: C:\texlive\2011\texmf-dist
  • OS X: /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf-dist

All the CM* fonts are at $TEXMFDIST/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm, and the MS* fonts are at $TEXMFDIST/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/symbols. You can install these as system fonts if you want to. But if you don't want to clutter your system fonts, you can copy all the pfb and pfm files to Adobe's local font folder:

  • Windows: Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts
  • OS X: Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts

If you don't actually have TeX, there's also an incomplete collection of TeX fonts here.

XeLaTeX

For easy compatability with Illustrator, you can use XeLaTeX and fontspec to write your LaTeX document in a font available to your system. For math, download a Unicode math font and use it with unicode-math.

Minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[no-math]{fontspec}
\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}
\setmainfont{Times LT Std}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{XITS-Math.otf}

\begin{document}
This is some text\par
This is some text with numbers 01234567\par
\[\left(\frac{\omega^2\rho}{\hat{\jmath}}\right)=\int \sqrt{\mathcal{M}(f)}\;dx\] 
\end{document}

Bonus: Your PDF will be tiny.
Downside: Math spacing issues introduced with unicode-math. Limited microtype support.

Other solutions

If you want to guarantee that Illustrator won't mess up your LaTeX document's formatting...

This page suggests using Ghostscript to outline all text on the page:

gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -dNOCACHE -sOutputFile=nofont-Myfile.ps -q -dbatch         -dNOPAUSE Myfile.pdf -c quit

You can also do that in Illustrator, as shown in this video. But this means you can't edit the text – just reposition elements. It will also probably inflate your PDF's size quite a bit.

If you just want to draw on top of the LaTeX document, you can make a new PDF in Illustrator and Place the LaTeX PDF in the background, as in the first part of that video. Make your doodles, remove the background, save the PDF, and overlay it on one of your LaTeX document's pages using \includegraphics.

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  • 1
    This is probably naive, but I'm sure it would help others too... where do I actually get those fonts?
    – lid
    Feb 21, 2012 at 13:59
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    @lid: On CTAN.
    – Martin Schröder
    Feb 21, 2012 at 22:00
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    This also fixes the "dragging from LaTeXit to illustrator uses wrong font" problem.
    – Alec Jacobson
    Jan 3, 2016 at 1:21
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    I could kiss you right now.
    – Álvaro
    Mar 5, 2017 at 8:24
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    If /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts does not exist you can create it and it works.
    – Jubei
    Oct 16, 2019 at 8:20
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Moving fonts, Windows 10, CS6

In Windows 10, using CS6, I could only find the fonts in Adobe Illustrator when putting the tex fonts into the folder below

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 (64 Bit)\Support Files\Required\Fonts

In Windows 10, it did not work to paste the tex files into 

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\FontsRecommended

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\FontsRequired

in the Common Files folder as suggested above.

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3
  • Same issue for Illustrator CC on Windows 10; fonts copied to Common Files were not recognized. The suggested \Support Files\Required\Fonts did work.
    – Joost
    Apr 19, 2017 at 8:37
  • At first I had the same issue. Illustrator CS6 in Windows 10 did no pick up the fonts I copied into the Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts folder (which I had to create) as described by Chel but when I copied the files also into the \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts Illustrator and also all other CS6 programs recognized the fonts. I did not recognize that I had a 32bit and a 64bit version of Illustrator installed at the same time.
    – DrBones
    Apr 21, 2017 at 12:57
  • (continued) Simply take care to copy into the correct folder structure, it was not necessary to copy the fonts directly into Illustrators Support Files folder as long as the Fonts folder is created just as Chel instructed.
    – DrBones
    Apr 21, 2017 at 12:57

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