Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full Direct

Let’s look at a snippet of a PDF object dictionary that contains the full F1–F6 sequence.

15 0 obj
<<
  /Type /Font
  /Subtype /CIDFontType2
  /BaseFont /CIDFont+F1
  /CIDSystemInfo <<
    /Registry (Adobe)
    /Ordering (Identity)
    /Supplement 0
  >>
  /FontDescriptor 16 0 R
  /DW 1000
  /W [0 [500] 31 [600] 40 [700]]
>>
endobj
... (repeated for F2 through F6 with different /FontDescriptor references)

Notice:

If you are encountering issues where F1, F2, or F3 appear as errors or garbled text, consider the following solutions:

Run:

pdffonts -subst yourfile.pdf

Output example:

name                              type         encoding         emb sub uni object ID
--------------------------------- ------------ ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
CIDFont+F1                        CID Type 0   Identity-H       yes yes yes      4  0
CIDFont+F2                        CID Type 0   Identity-H       yes yes yes      5  0

In real-world prepress workflows, here is what each F-number usually represents:

| CIDFont Name | Most Common Base Font | Typical Use Case | |--------------|----------------------|------------------| | CIDFont+F1 | KozMinPro-Regular (Adobe Japanese) | Body text in Japanese documents | | CIDFont+F2 | KozMinPro-Bold | Headings or emphasis in CJK | | CIDFont+F3 | AdobeMingStd-Light | Chinese (Simplified or Traditional) | | CIDFont+F4 | SimSun (subset) | MS Windows CJK fallback | | CIDFont+F5 | BatangChe (Korean) | Hangul text blocks | | CIDFont+F6 | ArialUnicodeMS | Mixed script, emoji, or rare symbols |

Important: These mappings are not universal. Another PDF might map F1 to Times New Roman (if encoded as CID due to Unicode mapping). Always inspect the original font descriptor. cidfont f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 full

If you have ever extracted a PDF generated by Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or a legacy PostScript printer driver, you may have stumbled upon a strange sight in the font list: CIDFont+F1, CIDFont+F2, extending all the way to F6. To the untrained eye, these look like corrupt or temporary font names. In reality, they are the backbone of robust, cross-platform printing.

Understanding CIDFont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 full mapping is not just an academic exercise—it is a critical troubleshooting skill for prepress technicians, PDF optimizers, and archival specialists.

This article provides a complete technical deep dive into what these F-tags mean, how they are generated, why you see six of them, and how to manage them in production workflows. Let’s look at a snippet of a PDF