Dumb mistake with PDF

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maho
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Registriert: So 18 Mai 2003 02:02

Dumb mistake with PDF

Beitrag von maho »

Hello PhotoLiners,

I'm hoping you can help me recover from a dumb mistake.

I have been working for quite some time on a multipage document in PhotoLine - images and text. Because a downstream client requires it, I have been saving it regularly in PDF format. (I usually save in PLD format, but some reason, I simply forgot this time). Yesterday I had to reboot my computer for other reasons. When I go to reopen the PDF file in PhotoLine, it does not import properly:

1) Images look like they've been horribly downscaled (unusable).

2) Text layers have been fractured into dozens of new layers, with one layer per character!

Note that the PDF file renders absolutely perfectly in Adobe Acrobat. But I need to further edit that PDF document, and I can't.

So unless I can find a way to recover the original document in its original quality, 8 hours of work is down the tubes.

Any suggestions? (Other than, don't save to PDF!)
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Herbert123
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Re: Dumb mistake with PDF

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

First, to avoid these sort of issues from occurring next time, turn on the "Save a PLD file additionally" option in the Save options. PhotoLine will then save a PLD native file alongside the PDF or jpg, and automatically load up the PLD version when opening the exported file. Super handy, and it has saved me from losing work a few times now.

Since PDF is not meant as a final output file format, text lines are split into separate objects. Couple of options to fix this:
- select all text layers that belong to one text block, and hit ALT-CTRL M to merge. You will lose some formatting, but paragraph styles can resolve this quickly.
- use a PDF editor such as PDF Exchange Editor to copy the text, remove the text layers in your PLD, and replace. More manual work.

As for the images: are these scaled down to a lower resolution? If so, do you have the original images as separate files? If so, select each image layer, and use the File-->Import-->Image into Active Layer command to replace the lower resolution versions.

This command will replace the lower resolution version with the original version and maintain the scale in your layout.

Create a keyboard shortcut for this command in the options to speed up the process.

Hope this helps.
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Martin Huber
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Re: Dumb mistake with PDF

Beitrag von Martin Huber »

maho hat geschrieben: Di 11 Aug 2020 14:25 2) Text layers have been fractured into dozens of new layers, with one layer per character!
Current versions of PhotoLine should combine uniformly formatted text to lines. Maybe try the current version.
Herbert123 hat geschrieben: Di 11 Aug 2020 20:01(...)- select all text layers that belong to one text block, and hit ALT-CTRL M to merge. (...)
Just for info: This is the menu command "Layout > Text > Merge Marked Text Layers".

Martin
maho
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Re: Dumb mistake with PDF

Beitrag von maho »

Thanks for the responses guys.
"Save a PLD file additionally" option in the Save options
I did not know about this functionality - that's a great idea.

I noticed under Preferences->Options->File->PDF there is a choice for Image Compression.

My basic understanding of PDF is that it implements documents as multiple layers (similar to PL). So if a PDF document is a mixture of text and images (originally in JPEG), does setting the Image Compression to No Compression just leave the image layers with their original JPEG compression?
Martin Huber
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Re: Dumb mistake with PDF

Beitrag von Martin Huber »

maho hat geschrieben: Sa 15 Aug 2020 01:09 My basic understanding of PDF is that it implements documents as multiple layers (similar to PL).
Yes, a PDF can contain images, vector graphcis and text.
maho hat geschrieben: Sa 15 Aug 2020 01:09 So if a PDF document is a mixture of text and images (originally in JPEG), does setting the Image Compression to No Compression just leave the image layers with their original JPEG compression?
I would never use "No compression", but "ZIP best" instead.

PhotoLine will always reuse the original JPEG data of an image layer if possible.
It is not possible, if
- the color space has to be changed (Color Space in the PDF settings)
- the image has to be scaled down (Resolution in the PDF settings)
- the current Image Compression creates a smaller data
- the image doesn't have an effect or transparency that can't be saved directly in PDF

Martin
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