When do you all use Optical kerning or do you usually leave it at Metrics?
Most of the time, switching to Optical looks much better to me and it's usually pretty different, even with Adobe or HF+J fonts. However, I know foundries carefully work out the pairing spacing, so I never know if I'm just wrong when I switch to Optical.
Metrics *should* be the preferred option. Pro fonts have mostly been kerned to near perfection. On the other hand, there are nice looking fonts out there that have worthless kerning and these will benefit from using this Adobe feature (based on a theory of David Kindersley, if I am not mistaken — viz: http://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/spacing/ ).
BTW I do wish Adobe would include in InDesign etcetera a feature from QuarkXPress (…used to have, maybe, because I left QXP behind when ID 1.5 came out): the opportunity to define global tracking (as Quark called it) for specific sizes. As you should know smaller sizes need more tracking than larger ones.
More info here: http://www.graphics.com/article-old/design-fundamentals-kerning-and-trac...
The trick with Optical is that you need to developaon eye on when it does help (more often than some people like to admit) and then trust it for that particular font.
hhp
Friends don't let friends use "optical" kerning.
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