Grabbing assets from a PDF file

**pauland** · 09 October 2007, 09:45 PM

A potential customer has supplied a PDF containing assets for use in a flash animation. I'm finding it a bit of a PIA to extract those assets for use in flash.

What's the best workflow to repurpose these assets inside the PDF file for use with Flash?

Probably the most frustrating thing is that some of the bitmap assets clearly have transparency (they are over a bitmap), but so far no success in transferring that transparency over.

I have access to AI CS3, Acrobat, Xara Xtreme Pro 3.2.

Clearly, I can reproduce some things, or mask them again, but it would be nice to get these assets into flash with minimal effort.

So how might I get my bitmap with transparency out of the PDF complete with transparency?

Thanks,

Paul

Paul

**steve.ledger** · 10 October 2007, 12:54 AM

I guess if the transparency of the upperlevel object has been merged with the object below before exporting to PDF, then the entire asset will be one single bitmap? If this is the case, you're in for oodles of fun....

Does the PDF properties (ctrl+D) indicate which programe produced the export?

We get many sent to us which are CorelDraw exports.

**Egg Bramhill** · 10 October 2007, 01:34 AM

Hi Paul,

Never imported a pdf into Flash before so I just gave it a try. Worked okay.

However I don't see how I could help further without your pdf file.

**pauland** · 10 October 2007, 01:54 AM

I didn't know you could import a PDF directly to flash. It didn't work for me.

Sorry, can't give you the PDF!

Paul

**pauland** · 10 October 2007, 01:56 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

I guess if the transparency of the upperlevel object has been merged with the object below before exporting to PDF, then the entire asset will be one single bitmap? If this is the case, you're in for oodles of fun....

Does the PDF properties (ctrl+D) indicate which programe produced the export?

We get many sent to us which are CorelDraw exports.

The PDF was produced by Quark Express.

Some of the assets are single bitmaps, some not. I had to cur some stuff out of a bitmap.

Paul

**Egg Bramhill** · 10 October 2007, 04:01 AM

Hi Paul,

I didn't know you could import a PDF directly to flash

Try it with a simple PDF file and you'll see it works.

The file I included is not a simple pdf, it's 300 dpi, but you'll get the idea

**pauland** · 10 October 2007, 02:43 PM

Well, Flash CS3 didn't get far with your PDF, but Flash 8 was happy with it. Flash 8 didn't like the PDF I was using though, and CS3 didn't want to know.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Paul

**remi** · 11 October 2007, 05:14 AM

Maybe you're able to import the PDF within Xara Xtreme (only if the PDF file isn't protected) and export the same file as SWF?

Remi

**pauland** · 11 October 2007, 08:36 AM

Xtreme was able to import the file, but many items were part of a clipview. Trying to export something inside of a clipview resulted in a poor image, while removing the clipview meant that images lost their transparency/alpha.

The imported assets had clipviews containing unrelated items from disparate parts of the page, though I won't necessarily blame Xtreme for that. I'm glad that Xtreme did give me the opportunity to get at the assets. Unfortunately I didn't get the gig - too much time spent messing around with the pdf and not enough time on the rest!

I've just gone back to check out the PDF again and had a surprising result. My first experiment was exporting a clipview image as a swf and that comes in as a mess to flash (the bitmap is corrupted, but transparency is fine). I then looked at some other parts of the page and as I unravelled the overlayed clipviews, I found a bullet point that had lost it's alpha. This led me to think I couldn't get alphas out of the PDF via Xtreme.

Today I've looked again and found that Xtreme will output a clipview as a png with transparency without problem. The same clipview as a swf is messed up.

Naturally I have tried the same experiment with Xtreme from native Xtreme clipviews and they work perfectly (though bizarrely the swf contains the clipview shape, plus the bitmap). I have also realised that the bullet points that seemed to lose their clipmap, thus having a square white background, also have that on first import from PDF (it's just unnoticeable at small sizes)

So, I could have gotten away with the png, but the swf was definitely corrupted and one of the elements I thought had transparency didn't - leading me to falsely conclude that I couldn't get any transparency out of that PDF.

I have looked yet again and the original PDF has bullet points that do not have a background square, but on import to Xtreme they then have a white background, leading me to think that the PDF importer has lost the bullet point transparency.

Sorry, for the rambling explanation - it was all a bit confusing.

Paul