Resolved (sort of) – Preflight warning: Placed PDF from Designer says not compatible, will be rasterized on export???

[nwhit]

Working on a doc in 1.10.0 and have a couple PDF's exported from ADesigner. Have them marked as PDF Passthrough. Yet Preflight is warning "Placed PDF version (PDF-1.7) is not compatible with the PDF export version. The PDF will be rasterized on export."

I haven't tried exporting yet, but the warning concerns me. I've tried exporting from Designer in both For Print and For Export, but get the same warning. If I place the Designer doc instead of the exported PDF, I don't get a warning. 

Obviously, I don't want the placed PDFs to rasterize. Is this a bug or is this newer feature just a bit more complicated than simply placing a PDF and having marked as Passthrough? Haven't tried exporting from Designer in PDF-x formats, but would think a "normal" PDF for Print or Export would be "compatible" in Publisher. But obviously I'm doing something wrong.

[nwhit]

Not sure how this got moved from Bugs to Questions. I've looked in the online Help for Publisher regarding the recent feature to Place PDFs as Passthrough, but I cannot see anything in the entire online Help that says what kind/type of PDF will actually passthrough without rasterizing on export (thus, not really passthrough). 

As per my original post, a PDF created in v1.10 of Designer apparently cannot be used for Passthrough in Publisher v1.10? That doesn't seem to make any sense, thus the question if this is a bug. Placing a Designer PDF shouldn't end up getting rasterized when exporting a PDF of the Publisher document, at least I wouldn't think so since that would be of little use. 

Right now, I cannot seem to locate any information of what is allowed to be Placed as a Passthrough PDF if I want to avoid the Preflight error message that it will be rasterized. If Passthrough doesn't work with Designer-created PDFs, then how do I create a PDF that can be Placed for Passthrough in Pub? 

[DrScardo]

I've just discovered that PDF 1.7 completely crashes Publisher - I imported 200 pages that I'd individualised using PDFSam, not knowing that they would change from the 1.3 versions to 1.7 (and change resolution too).

Somehow I was able the first time to get the whole thing running and exported final PDF output, but next day I was unable to open and run the app with this project.

After a LOT of searching around I found that this was the issue (it had not done the pre-flight check on first export, so I was not alerted to the error). I then dragged every single page of a 200 page score from Mac Preview to a new directory, and these I was able to drag into Pub without a problem.

Yes, I did try import from file -but the results were less than acceptable - with musical fonts not rasterising properly, and other text placement and definition issues.

So PDF import is still a big bug, and a clumsy, time consuming and fiddly solution is still the only way.  I thought that PDFSam would be a huge time-saver - but AfPub hates the PDFs it creates.

[nwhit]

Just watched the Affinity video on placing content including PDFs, but like the online Help, it does not explain what kind of PDFs will actually passthrough instead of rasterizing. Rasterizing a placed PDF is not acceptable under most situations, so one would think that if there is a limitation on the kind of PDFs that will work, that info should be readily available in the Help. It's just hard to imagine that PDFs created in Designer won't work. I thought that might be a bug, but apparently it isn't. 

Sure could use some help on this since I have a publication that needs to be finalised. 

[nwhit]

Okay, after a whole bunch of searches and reading, finally found an answer in a beta thread. 

1. In Preflight panel, need to click the Edit Profile in the little Actions menu (top right of pane).

2. Go down to PDF Passthrough, then select the minimum type of PDF you're wanting to Place.

3. Will need to Create a Preset for that setting since the Default seems to be a minimum of X-1a:2003. Otherwise you will always see the error message if you are Placing regular v1.7 PDFs. 

Overall, doesn't seem like a very intuitive or smooth way to do this preflighting. Would think there would be a better way, but who knows. Maybe in upcoming versions.

Just wish that this would be explained on the need and how to do this in the online Help for the app! The Help says there is a Preflight for PDF Passthrough, but doesn't explain how it works and the need to set it to what you want in the Edit mode. 

[Dan C]

Hi @nwhit,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble and my apologies for the delayed response here, we are extremely busy following our 1.10 update and working from home during the pandemic is unfortunately extending our response window to be longer than normal, many thanks for your continued patience and understanding.

I'm glad to hear you have been able to resolve this issue yourself, although I certainly agree that the documentation could be much better in this regard.

I will pass your feedback through to our documentation team now, to see how this can be improved in future updates. I hope this helps

[nwhit]

Thanks @Dan C. I normally participate fairly deeply in the betas as these new features are added, but when PDF Passthrough happened, I was too busy to get more than superficially involved. Thus I missed the discussion on the ramifications for Preflight.

Also seems odd that something so critical (the Preflight errors show virtually all the time due to the default being for an X-PDF) wasn't covered in the new video tutorial for the new PDF Passthrough/Placement. It would seem that most all users would get a preflight error after placing a PDF for passthrough since using PDF-x output isn't all that common except for users working with prepress requirements. I'm guessing most users simply ignore the errors (or don't use Preflight) because trying to find out the actual meaning of the preflight error is very difficult to ascertain. Perhaps it should be added to a Publisher FAQ section until it is better described in the Help.

I watched the progress of PDF passthrough with great interest during the beta process since I used to have a background in print shops, newspapers, publications, etc. where it is a critical feature for modern publishing. I realize that it is still a work in progress with some rough edges still, so can understand how this might have been overlooked. Hoping at least the presence of this thread will help others who, like me, are initially baffled by the preflight error messages and can't find much of any info on the errors. Pretty simple to fix, assuming you know where to look!! 😉

Overall, Affinity apps just keep getting better and better. A few bumps along the way, but so refreshing as compared to the old standard apps. I was an Aldus PageMaker v1 user and trainer, so it's been a long journey to get to this point. While Publisher still has some glaring missing things, it is today highly competitive with far greater customer support. Thanks again.

[sceyefeye]

Thank you @nwhit simple and clear explanation on how to solve this. Pity there is not a clear warning when placing, and well I was obviously looking in the wrong place for a solution till I found this thread.

[ChrisNZAK]

Thanks @nwhit I have Version 2 and struggling to output a 40 page magazine with multiple placed Advertisements in various pdf versions.
The program keeps showing an error message before exporting the final pdf for CMYK Offset printing.
Luckily I found your post through a web search.

I made the change to PDF Passthrough but still get a warning that (PDF Version (PDF-1.6) is not compatible?
However the file appears to have output correctly. Edited: (Using PDF/X-1a:2003. It gave an error message with PDF/X-4)