PDF Text Boxes Broken on Re-Open

[timothyquinlan]

I am translating a book. I used Photoline to erase the original french, and I made text boxes to type in the translation.

I saved it and it looks great in other apps. Now I go to re-open it in photoline and edit the text and two things happen:

1. The text boxes are now hundreds of individual layers, one for each character, making editing impossible.

and

2. Many of the letters are missing. It is a 300 page book and when re-opened in photoline the letters "f" "i" and "t" are missing. LIterally missing from the entire document with black spaces where they should be. If I open the same PDF in preview, all of the letters are there.

What can I do to fix this?

[Martin Huber]

Answer to 1. Either save the file as PLD and only export to PDF when you really need a PDF, or activate in the options/preferences "Save a PLD file additionally" (at "File > Save Options").

Answer to 2: I don't quite understand. Are the letters missing in the PDF created by PhotoLine or are they already missing the original file? A sample file would be helpful, but I fear that a 300 pages document will be to large.

Martin

[timothyquinlan]

The file saved as PDF from photoline looks like this when I open it in Preview or Adobe Acrobat:

http://prnt.sc/bxso7i


When I open it again In Photoline to edit it, it looks like this:

http://prnt.sc/bxsodg


If I copy and paste the text from within preview or Adobe I get these weird characters:

http://prnt.sc/bxsp4j

Basically this is a huge problem! I understand the idea of saving things as a PLD and only making PDFs when necessary. Unfortunately it is too late for this one.

[mwenz]

Consider uploading the PDF here, or to a document sharing service and providing a download link.

[bkh]

When I open it again In Photoline to edit it, it looks like this:

http://prnt.sc/bxsodg


If I copy and paste the text from within preview or Adobe I get these weird characters:

http://prnt.sc/bxsp4j

Looks like there is a problem with ligatures. So far, I haven't been able to reproduce your problem – tried Calibri, Helvetica Neue and Lucida Grande. In all cases, PL re-opened the pdf files and the ligatures showed and could be edited as individual characters (on OS X). I can also copy and paste text using Acrobat Reader DC (Apple Preview doesn't handle ligatures correctly, it seems.) I've attached a sample pdf.

Maybe it's a font and/or Windows problem? What font do you use? Can you produce a small sample pdf document with some of the problematic ligatures (ff, fl, ti, …)? Do you have the same problem when using other fonts?

Btw., it's normal that text in PDF files is split into small pieces (to get the letter spacing right). PL has a command "Merge Marked Text Layers" which can be used to re-assemble those layers into a single text layer.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[timothyquinlan]

Thank you for your help. It seems at this point that the file was opened and saved by another program at some point and that is what is causing the errors the fonts between programs.

I am very happy to hear about merging linked text boxes. That is extremely useful!