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Import PDF as image in Affinity Photo // rasterize all


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  • 1 month later...

I want this feature too. Annoying to make screenshot from a Firefox which can open correctly the pdf. I work for a weekly newspaper and make the cover image from the print ready pdf. All other apps can handle except Affinity. The font embedded into the pdf. Why Affinty cant handle? So i must stick with Pixelmator and Mac instead of use AP.

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As fonts are embedded in PDF it should not be necessary to rasterize PDF. Affinity should offer option to insert PDF as passthrough in addition of normal editable version (which needs fonts). I assume this is considered as Publisher feature.

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It's not so simple because of the licencing. OpenType fonts has an embedded licence which tells what you can do with them. The most common is preview and print. At this moment -If i'm not wrong, but correct me - Affinity Photo can't use embedded fonts just get the option to replace with your installed fonts. I have several customers. If i bought all the fonts which need for my every day work i lost the price advantage of AP. I bought on the first week when released but never work with it because i must work often with pdf files which i get from my customers.

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I often use pdfToolbox to convert type to curves. I find I need to do this often with ad submissions, especially with InDdesign's PDFs. Sometimes I do rip to an image format (also using pdfToolbox or Acrobat) just so any transparency issues are avoided. But other than that, there is little reason for me to open for editing a PDF.

 

If I need to modify a PDF, I'll often use either XDP or CD. Both of which deal with PDFs and embedded fonts well. XDP will generally just use the embedded subset, CD gives a choice of live type of convert to curves. CD uses Ghostscript in the background to do this, which would be a good option for Serif. But once pdfToolbox converts the type to curves, it can be opened just fine in anything that can import a PDF, including AD or APhoto.

 

Mike

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 year later...

It is common practice to rasterize any pdf into photoshop, or place it in InDesign. As a pdf is a "finished graphic" it should be usable "as is". No extra fonts or license needed. It would be nice if this feature could be added in Affinity, so a pixel rasterised version or unaltered vector version of the graphic can be imported in the desired format!

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  • 6 months later...
On 3/3/2020 at 9:10 AM, AffAdept said:

It is common practice to rasterize any pdf into photoshop, or place it in InDesign. As a pdf is a "finished graphic" it should be usable "as is". No extra fonts or license needed. It would be nice if this feature could be added in Affinity, so a pixel rasterised version or unaltered vector version of the graphic can be imported in the desired format!

I totally agree. Someone should take care of this.

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I work for a commercial printer and it is best not to have fonts or transparent content as many printers will have issues with this.  One of the bigger problems is transparency.  Printers will try and flatten any PDF with transparency and this can sometimes cause atomic regions.  This is where splits (lines or boxes) are created within the artwork around flattened areas, breaking up the artwork.  A lot of people online say that this is an onscreen issue only and it can be, but sometimes this is not the case and will print these lines also.

I quite often receive client's artwork that will need to be flattened, such as large posters etc (our wide format printer will flatten and create different coloured blocks within these atomic regions, not too mention strange glyphs from embedded fonts).  The easiest way to get around this without having the atomic region issue or strange glyphs appearing is to directly pull the PDF straight into Photoshop - this then converts the whole page into a raster graphic which I can then export back out and use with no issues at all.

The trouble with Affinity Photo is that it wants to try and be smart by allowing text editing and manipulation of the contents within the PDF.  All I want it to do is import it in as a Raster image.  But when I do, it changes fonts and creates atomic region lines, making the whole imported file not usable at all.

I would dearly love to do away with Photoshop and it's expensive monthly subscription, but this import issue is unfortunately stopping me.

Is there anyway to force Affinity Photo to import a PDF as a straight raster image?

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On 9/21/2020 at 12:34 AM, Graphics Chris said:

I work for a commercial printer and it is best not to have fonts or transparent content as many printers will have issues with this.  One of the bigger problems is transparency.  Printers will try and flatten any PDF with transparency and this can sometimes cause atomic regions.  This is where splits (lines or boxes) are created within the artwork around flattened areas, breaking up the artwork.  A lot of people online say that this is an onscreen issue only and it can be, but sometimes this is not the case and will print these lines also.

I quite often receive client's artwork that will need to be flattened, such as large posters etc (our wide format printer will flatten and create different coloured blocks within these atomic regions, not too mention strange glyphs from embedded fonts).  The easiest way to get around this without having the atomic region issue or strange glyphs appearing is to directly pull the PDF straight into Photoshop - this then converts the whole page into a raster graphic which I can then export back out and use with no issues at all.

The trouble with Affinity Photo is that it wants to try and be smart by allowing text editing and manipulation of the contents within the PDF.  All I want it to do is import it in as a Raster image.  But when I do, it changes fonts and creates atomic region lines, making the whole imported file not usable at all.

I would dearly love to do away with Photoshop and it's expensive monthly subscription, but this import issue is unfortunately stopping me.

Is there anyway to force Affinity Photo to import a PDF as a straight raster image?

What software/RIPS are you using? I am assuming it is some pretty old software?

PDF's with embedded fonts have rarely given me trouble and I have not needed to flatten files outside of the rare occasion. Created files in Illustrator or Indesign are 9.9/10 good to go for print, be it wide format, digital, or for platting to go on press.  

 

 

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Fonts are not an issue with me - but that is because I convert everything to curves before printing.

The issue is with transparent objects.  All RIPS flatten before printing and 50-60% of the time this will be an issue, more so with the large format printers and even on offset plate makers.  When it flattens the objects it tries to make one object and that can cause wrong colours as it tries to mash two or more transparent objects together creating a new colour to represent the transparent component or it will print solid boxes around the atomic regions.  The way around this is to pull the whole artwork into Photoshop to flatten it here and then export it back out as a raster image. (You also have to import it in as an RGB and NOT CMYK, as you can can get the same issues because CMYK doesn't understand transparency and then once imported into photoshop, convert it back to CMYK).

I would like Affinity Photo to simply import a PDF artwork as a direct raster image (no editing required).  But it wants to create text boxes to allow editing of the text and this creates square lines around text boxes and any transparency like drop shadows just don't work properly.

Maybe the RIPS are old, I don't know, that is not my role at the company as I am the graphic designer.  We are using a Leased Xerox that I know is fairly old, but we have our own wide format Mutoh brand that is the main concern - it's probably only around 8 years.

I have worked in this industry for nearly 30 years and everywhere I have been the same issue is present with transparency printing.  I consulted with Adobe and there response was, "Don't use Transparency".  Real helpful....not!  But the main problem is not so much the tools but the way CMYK printing works.  So the software tools won't help eradicate this issue, but it should would help if their prepress tools were better designed as Adobe DC/Pro flattening also causes the same issue a printer causes - hence the reason I rasterise the artwork within Photoshop.

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6 hours ago, Graphics Chris said:

I would like Affinity Photo to simply import a PDF artwork as a direct raster image (no editing required)

I completely agree but I doubt that will happen. All the Affinity programs work in a similar way in terms of keeping text as text when opening and also in terms of keeping layers intact. That is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For my large format printer I learnt to place the PDF in InDesign and then export as a jpeg.

Windows 10 Pro, I5 3.3G PC 16G RAM

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On 9/24/2020 at 4:38 AM, MickRose said:

I completely agree but I doubt that will happen. All the Affinity programs work in a similar way in terms of keeping text as text when opening and also in terms of keeping layers intact. That is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For my large format printer I learnt to place the PDF in InDesign and then export as a jpeg.

The latest beta for Publisher has PDF passthrough which should make it more like Indesign. The PDF is placed in Publisher without Publisher making it editable. I have not used the beta, just  heard they had this in the latest. 

As for the transparency issues, I can't remember the last time I had an issue with that. I use drop shadows, opacity on objects, etc. Never gives me problems. Now I am using CMYK and not trying to use transparency or drop shadows and things like that when dealing with 2 colour jobs that include 2 pantones or pantone + K.  I would think the issue is probably your RIP. 

 

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I think we're getting a bit off topic in regards to the RIPS.  Basically there are a million and one things that can cause this issue in printing.  One person's PDF can be totally different from another person's PDF even if its the same Adobe PDF version.  The inside Metadata of a PDF and the postscript it creates will mean the difference between one working and one not working and that is all determined by many components software/driver related.

Getting back to the issue....it would be good if Affinity added the ability to rasterise a PDF dropped directly into Affinity Photo.  Apart from fixing some flattening issues, it would be good to make edits to an image created from a PDF.  I also sometimes drop a PDF into Photoshop if I need to add some complex content such as bleeds for photos or images.  But dropping a PDF into Affinity Photo CAN cause lines and boxes around text and messes with drop shadows - it makes the entire image useless to use within Affinity Photo.  And sometimes you just want to convert the whole image into a web based rasterised image.

Now it doesn't do this all the time, but will mostly do it if the text has some special text effect added to it such as drop shadows.

If you're not having this problem, lucky you.  But I experience it too many times.

I would like to cut my ties with Adobe, but this is stopping me from doing so.  Just hoping someone could tell me that Affinity Photo can drop in PDFs without incident by doing X, Y, Z.  

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/29/2020 at 4:12 AM, Graphics Chris said:

I think we're getting a bit off topic in regards to the RIPS.  Basically there are a million and one things that can cause this issue in printing.  One person's PDF can be totally different from another person's PDF even if its the same Adobe PDF version.  The inside Metadata of a PDF and the postscript it creates will mean the difference between one working and one not working and that is all determined by many components software/driver related.

Getting back to the issue....it would be good if Affinity added the ability to rasterise a PDF dropped directly into Affinity Photo.  Apart from fixing some flattening issues, it would be good to make edits to an image created from a PDF.  I also sometimes drop a PDF into Photoshop if I need to add some complex content such as bleeds for photos or images.  But dropping a PDF into Affinity Photo CAN cause lines and boxes around text and messes with drop shadows - it makes the entire image useless to use within Affinity Photo.  And sometimes you just want to convert the whole image into a web based rasterised image.

Now it doesn't do this all the time, but will mostly do it if the text has some special text effect added to it such as drop shadows.

If you're not having this problem, lucky you.  But I experience it too many times.

I would like to cut my ties with Adobe, but this is stopping me from doing so.  Just hoping someone could tell me that Affinity Photo can drop in PDFs without incident by doing X, Y, Z.  

I totally afree

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  • 2 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...
On 1/5/2021 at 7:41 PM, Steve@TangMarketing said:

I have switched from Adobe to Affinity software and still learning my way around. As PDF is a, Adobe format i used the free Adobe cloud to convert PDF to TIFF but you can also convert to PNG or JPG:

Convert PDF to JPG online for free | Adobe Acrobat

I hope this helps,

Steve

Hmmm. 72dpi standard resolution. Feels like a joke.

https://pdf2jpg.net/ is better.

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  • 6 months later...

I would just like to import a PDF into Affinity Photo and have it create one large raster image out of the whole thing - that's it, nothing else.  Photoshop does it without complaint.  I also notice that when importing a PDF, if you have drop shadows, this creates little lines around shadow objects (similar to atomic regions) - this is 100% of the time when importing PDFs into Photo with drop shadows - this makes Photo virtually useless if you want to import a PDF.  Unless you want to do a lot of work fixing it.

Everyone keeps talking about other options, using other software or changing RIPing software.   I didn't come here to find alternatives, because currently Adobe does it all for me - but if I want to leave Adobe and use Affinity, then I want and must have Affinity to do what Adobe does.  Simple - import PDF as is and convert it into a raster image.

The trouble with Affinity Photo is that is is trying to behave like Publisher when importing PDFs, to make them editable - but that's why I have publisher - if I want to edit a PDF, I use Publisher and not Photo.  But if I want to convert a PDF into a raster image, I would think Photo should do the job, but it doesn't.

So if anyone knows a way to import a PDF and have it look exactly like the pdf - great, let me know how it is done (forget about editing the PDF, I don't want to edit, just convert to a raster image).  If not, where can I post this info for the Affinity team to investigate to allow Photo to do exactly just importing and not making any adjustments to the imported file?

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