I’m designing a color font in FontCreator. When I export it as WOFF, the colors display perfectly in web browsers. But when I export it as TTF or OTF, the colors disappear in Microsoft Word and Adobe Illustrator.
What is the real reason behind this behavior?
Is it a format compatibility issue (COLR vs SVG)?
Is it about the software’s level of support?
Or is there something wrong in the way I export the font?
I’m looking for a precise technical explanation. Thank you!
Just make sure you have also included color in the TTF/OTF export settings.
Hello,
I’ve attached a composite screenshot that clearly shows all stages of my workflow and export process:
The font is set to export as TrueType
The COLR (2 format always) option is selected
The composite glyph (such as beh-arab) is built from separate components (body and dot)
Each component is properly colored using the palette
The font was tested after export
However, the result is not positive:
The colors do not appear in the FontCreator preview window (F5 – Test desktop)
They are also missing in Adobe Illustrator
And they do not appear in Microsoft Word either
Even though all technical settings seem correct, something appears to be missing—perhaps a step that must be done within the main glyph itself.
Is it not enough to color the components individually?
Should I also define Color Layers inside the composite glyph directly?
My earlier tests did work in Word, but I don’t have Illustrator.
I can’t guess from a screenshot, but maybe other people know what is wrong.
The F5 test dialog does not support color, it clearly mentions it. If it does not mention it, then you forgot to set Color in the export dialog as I mentioned before.
Just to confirm: color rendering works perfectly in Word with version fontcrator 12 , but not as expected with version 15. Version 12 seems to handle COLR export more effectively in this case.
Send both the project file and the two exported fonts along with Word documents and we will look into it.
