Analyze Fonts in PDF File using Poppler pdffonts

When working with PDF files, you may need to know which fonts are embedded or referenced inside the document. Instead of using online tools that could expose private information, you can use the pdffonts, a command line program included with the Poppler utilities. This tutorial demonstrates how to analyze fonts in PDF file using Poppler pdffonts.

Prepare environment

Make sure the Poppler utilities are installed on the system. If you are using Ubuntu, you can follow the installation guide.

Checking fonts in PDF

Let's download a sample PDF that contains several different fonts:

curl -sSo test.pdf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hopding/pdf-lib/master/assets/pdfs/standard_fonts_demo.pdf

Now, run the following command:

pdffonts test.pdf

You'll get output that lists all fonts found in the document:

name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no       7  0
Helvetica-Bold                       Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no       5  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no       4  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      11  0
Times-Roman                          Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      10  0
Times-Bold                           Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      13  0
Times-Italic                         Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      14  0
Times-BoldItalic                     Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      15  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      18  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      17  0
Helvetica-Bold                       Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      20  0
Helvetica-Oblique                    Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      21  0
Helvetica-BoldOblique                Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      22  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      25  0
Courier                              Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      24  0
Courier-Bold                         Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      27  0
Courier-Oblique                      Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      28  0
Courier-BoldOblique                  Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      29  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no      32  0
ZapfDingbats                         Type 1            ZapfDingbats     no  no  no      30  0
Symbol                               Type 1            Symbol           no  no  no      34  0

Each row tells you the font name, type, encoding, and whether it's embedded in the PDF.

Checking fonts for specific page range

You don't need to inspect the entire PDF document. With pdffonts command, you can narrow down the analysis to a specific set of pages by using -f (first page) and -l (last page). For example, to look only at pages 2 through 4:

pdffonts -f 2 -l 4 test.pdf