Problem with PDF export (images are negative?)

[mwenz]

Hello Pawel,

No optimization. I loaded the PDF into AI and exported out of AI as a PDF. It was that PDF made by AI I imported to XDP. I hadn't noticed the PNG image type. I simply opened the PDF in XDP as produced from AI and exported out to make sure it was OK.

Those CMYK JPGs in the original PDF are kind of funky. Xara doesn't have issues with the CMYK JPGs I have needed to use in the past, though I also usually convert them to CMYK TIFFs before using them in anything.

If you have Adobe Reader installed, you can use the File | Properties menu command to see what has produced a PDF. Usually the PDFs I have the most issues with are ones from InDesign. Sometimes troublesome PDFs open best in AI, sometimes XDP and sometimes in PagePlus. Never all of them in a single application.

And some, well, with some nothing I have will open one for editing properly. In the larger scheme of things, Adobe never, ever, meant for a PDF to be opened for editing. They were always designed for a final "thing" before print (and or archiving). These types of issues, though, make applications such as XDP to get better at doing something Adobe never meant to happen.

As for how often I edit PDFs? You might be surprised. I am working on a catalog for a New Jersey company right now that they had deleted all their original files. All that were left were a series of PDFs for the different chapters of the publication. And sometimes like with original art, a PDF is a great means of exchange if one doesn't own the originating application.

Take care, Mike

[angelize]

I have from time to time come a across a pdf file provided to me that will import into Xara with the images as negatives, one way I was able to fix it was to select the negative photo and use the negative filter which is located under colour filters in the live effect list. I assumed the problem was with the provided Pdfs my clients provided. In at least one case the negative filter did not provide a usable image and I had to go back to the client and get them to send a hi res jpeg image instead of the pdf.

[morris]

OK, OK, but we're straying from the original problem. It's not that I imported a PDF and the images turned negative, it's that Xara PRODUCED a negative-image PDF out of non-negative source. Of course importing images as negative is also a problem (that can be solved in numerous ways - a negative filter, as you mentioned, or by using The GIMP, which seems to correctly import PDFs, or using a PDF image extractor that will simply extract the image as-is), but you are presented with it as soon as the import process finishes. My case was somehow different - the image imported "normal" (non-negative) - at least Xara was displaying it correctly - but a PDF produced out of this image was wrong. I know it's a bad idea not to check the final result, but if I hadn't opened the produced PDF (I wasn't producing it for myself) I wouldn't have noticed that something went all wrong.

Pawel