Import pdf's

[Bert_auurk]

I just discovered the Affinity apps. I'm a long time Adobe user, still working on CS6. I'm not willing to do the update to CC because of the monthly charge. I'm not making a living out of graphic work, just doing it for PR and publications of our (non-profit) company.

I just purchased Photo and installed the beta version of Publisher. Looks great!

That being said, here's my question:

In Indesign, I use to import pdf files (exports from music notation software). That doesn't seem to work in Publisher. Or is it just a preference that should be changed. See printscreen attached.

 

[Fixx]

Do you have the original notation font installed? PDFs are opened/imported as editable and all document fonts should be installed.

[IFPA]

But the whole idea of a PDF (Portable Document Format) is to be able to use the file without the need for all fonts to be installed. For that reason PDFs are created with fonts embedded. The better way to handle this is to import the PDF as is without the need or even the ability to edit the file. Photo and Designer both need this feature as well. Maybe an option to either import or place the document as editable or use the embedded fonts, designers choice. That would be the best of both worlds.

[Fixx]

Yes, devs know passthrough mode is needed. Optimally opened PDFs would be editable and placed ones would be passthrough.

[JeanneGrey]

I'm having exactely the same problem. And I do have the musical fonts installed!

Anyone ever got a solution for this?

I *LOVE* being able to edit PDF documents in Affinity Publisher. But adding pass-through PDF pages would be awesome and is very crucial for my workflow.

Edited May 23, 2020 by JeanneGrey

[John Rostron]

A workaround that I have used is to open the music pdf in Omnipage (import). The export it as a re-named pdf. This usually works. It would probably also work in other pdf editors. I also do have the musical fonts installed.

@Bert_auurk Can I suggest that you change your title to 'Import music pdfs'.

John

[JeanneGrey]

It's not my thread, John, so I can't rename it.

I searched for Ominpage, and it's an OCR software ...!? Which technical process do you belive lays behind this workflow?

(But anyway, if I have to use an external tool, I may as well use an external tool just to merge pdf pages.)

[John Rostron]

15 minutes ago, JeanneGrey said:

Which technical process do you belive lays behind this workflow?

I will have to pass on that one!

John

[Duboiz]

Same issue here. Without the font in PDF import the app for us as a printshop is not usable. Workaround is nice, but it delay production and it easy just to go back to InDesign that does that. Had great hope for that suit, but you got what you paid for I guess...

[JeanneGrey]

But I have the font, and it still doesn't work.

[JeanneGrey]

I just noticed that Inkscapes opens those files without problem ...

[Marja E]

Same problem, but Inkscape will only open one pdf page at a time. I need to repair whole books. Besides switching fonts, Affinity Publisher turns some italic text into regular text, and adds spaces in the middle of words.

[Bert_auurk]

The suggested workarounds are really to time-consuming for the work I do. I'm lay outing a music theorie book with hundreds of music-examples that are pdf's exported in Musescore. With Indesign it's possible to:

1) import those pdf's directly

2) import multi-page pdf's and select which page should be imported in the frame.

 

[elk]

On macOS you can open i.e. a PDF-X3 in Apples Preview app and export it to JPG, PNG, TIFF. But it changes the color (in this example from CMYK IsoCoated v2 to sRGB). In a media neutral worklow this might be an workaround though.

[JeanneGrey]

The tip to convert vectors into pixels is straight outta "I create my magazine in Photoshop" hell ...

[JeanneGrey]

btw., the problem affects all Affinity software, including Photo and Designer.

[JeanneGrey]

2 hours ago, Marja E said:

Same problem, but Inkscape will only open one pdf page at a time. I need to repair whole books. Besides switching fonts, Affinity Publisher turns some italic text into regular text, and adds spaces in the middle of words.

I noticed that too! Sometimes there are more spaces, sometimes spaces are removed ...

[garrettm30]

5 hours ago, JeanneGrey said:

The tip to convert vectors into pixels is straight outta "I create my magazine in Photoshop" hell ...

Yes. Two problems: loss of crisp lines from vectors (who wants to read blurry music?) and unnecessarily increased file size, especially when there are multiple pages of music, such as Bert's theory book.

[Marja E]

17 hours ago, elk said:

On macOS you can open i.e. a PDF-X3 in Apples Preview app and export it to JPG, PNG, TIFF. But it changes the color (in this example from CMYK IsoCoated v2 to sRGB). In a media neutral worklow this might be an workaround though.

I'm trying to convert fancy pdfs into more-readable pdfs. Many of these fancy pdfs have colorful backgrounds which obscure the text. I'm trying to remove the colorful backgrounds for clarity and reprocess everything to pdf 1.4 for compatibility and speed. Exporting like that would convert the pdfs into many image files each, lose the searchable text, and keep the colorful backgrounds.

[Fixx]

On 6/18/2020 at 3:01 PM, elk said:

On macOS you can open i.e. a PDF-X3 in Apples Preview app and export it to JPG, PNG, TIFF. But it changes the color 

You can also use Preview to print to .ps which has text as curves and Publisher import OK. There may be some colour space problems in some situations.

[Duboiz]

There are many workarounds, lIke converting to outline in Acrobat Professional. But it just to slow process that it just better use other software that support it. I thought I will move to Affinity, but I guess I'm stuck with Adobe until then.

[Wosven]

12 hours ago, Marja E said:

I'm trying to convert fancy pdfs into more-readable pdfs. Many of these fancy pdfs have colorful backgrounds which obscure the text. I'm trying to remove the colorful backgrounds for clarity and reprocess everything to pdf 1.4 for compatibility and speed. Exporting like that would convert the pdfs into many image files each, lose the searchable text, and keep the colorful backgrounds.

To keep the text and only modify images, the solution for this would be to open the PDF in preferably Acrobat pro, or similar app able to keep the text and permit to delete/modify images. Once done, you only need to convert the file to the new specs you want.

[Marja E]

57 minutes ago, Wosven said:

To keep the text and only modify images, the solution for this would be to open the PDF in preferably Acrobat pro, or similar app able to keep the text and permit to delete/modify images. Once done, you only need to convert the file to the new specs you want.

I've tried Acrobat Reader, it gives me migraines. I don't have and can't afford Acrobat Pro.

[Blende21]

There are basically 2 types of pdf, one is plain pixel based (originating from scanners, for example), the other contains elements of readable text, graphical elements and the like.

For the first the only hope is to run it through another scanner, that comes with an OCR capability to extract the text. A cheap but amazingly good working solution on iOS is the app ScannerPro in the Pro Version. It will scan, OCR, and the text can be copied right away. If the text is an overlay for a picture, most OCR will not produce a legible result.

If the pdf was created from a File, it is of the second Type. Everything is in there, but you have to crack the pdf encoding. For this I use the app PDF Expert (available on iOS and MacOS). In the Pro Version it can extract nearly everything from a pdf file, however sometimes a bit fractured. A text may appear to be one block, but when extracted it is broken down in several text elements, each containing part of the story. The app can edit (modify the pdf itself) as well as annotate (overlay the original with remarks).

Both apps are made by readdle and reasonably priced.

[Marja E]

For scanned pdfs, I currently use k2pdfopt with options to clean up, convert jpeg2000 to jpeg, etc., and ocrmypdf with various options to ocr the pdf. The default k2pdfopt settings chop pages up for small Kindles, but -mode copy avoids that, and device, color handling, etc. settings can help create fast-loading and readable pdfs. I used to use Elucidate to ocr the pdf.

For other pdfs, I haven't found a good solution. Does Pdf Expert allow users to remove a given layer (not merge it into the rest of the pdf, but remove as in remove), or change OCProperties (the setting to show or hide a layer by default)? It's possible that the right OCProperties might keep k2pdfopt or other processing tools from passing that layer through, so that older devices can show the pdf without the extra graphics obscuring everything.