PDF woes

[DavidDoesAffinity]

PUBLISHER 1.7.2.471

I start from the premise of what am I doing wrong as opposed to WTF? Perhaps WTF am I doing wrong is better still??

I have a design of a DVD sleeve which I export to pdf (print)

I print from Acrobat and all black text has a white shadow.

I bring the pdf in PHOTO and  "I'm still Standing" becomes "I’m SĀll Standing"  and "The Little Shoemaker" becomes "The LiĜle Shoemaker" along with other C&@k U$s

It prints OK from Publisher but I want to support my friendly Community Interest Company Print Shop to Print and Cut the sleeves so was expecting to send a pdf.

How is it I can  edit a TV commecial, deliver it to broadcasters complying with the complexities and excitement of ITU-R BT.1702-1 2018, EBU R102 and EBU R128 yet cannot get a simple pdf to print correctly. 

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?

[firstdefence]

It would help if you could upload the offending file so we can see what reaction we get to opening the PDF.

Would you upload the afphoto file as well?

 

[IanSG]

I've just had an almost identical problem using PDFs of sheet music in APub.  The problem seems to be related to missing / non-standard fonts.  Check that AP hasn't replaced fonts and see if that's something you can sort out.  Alternatively, because I was getting sheet music with all sorts of weird and wonderful public domain fonts, I elected to print the PDFs as images using the Microsoft PDF print option in Win 10, and then brought those into Publisher.   I lose the ability to edit the content in the Affinity programs, but if anything's wrong I can blame someone else 

[DavidDoesAffinity]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

It would help if you could upload the offending file so we can see what reaction we get to opening the PDF.

Would you upload the afphoto file as well?

 

I have now worked out that once again rasterisation (or lack of it) is the cause of the problem. When I went into export/pdf print and selected Rasterise/ Everything the problems went away. That said I still do not know the BEST settings.

So that you can see the original issue, I have stripped the project back and saved the pdf WITHOUT RASTERISE

1 When I print from Acrobat I get a white shadow on the text.

2 If I open the pdf in A PHOTO, then some of the text is corrupted- hopefully you will see that well known Elton John number I’m SĀll Standing...etc

3 Not only that the same issue is there when the pdf is re-imported back into APub

test.afpub

test.pdf

[DavidDoesAffinity]

7 minutes ago, IanSG said:

I've just had an almost identical problem using PDFs of sheet music in APub.  The problem seems to be related to missing / non-standard fonts.  Check that AP hasn't replaced fonts and see if that's something you can sort out.  Alternatively, because I was getting sheet music with all sorts of weird and wonderful public domain fonts, I elected to print the PDFs as images using the Microsoft PDF print option in Win 10, and then brought those into Publisher.   I lose the ability to edit the content in the Affinity programs, but if anything's wrong I can blame someone else 

Hi Ian 

Our posts crossed. You are Importing into APub whereas I'm exporting and finding issues, particularly when importing the same pdf into APub and APhoto . My fonts were standard and not missing as you will see from the test files uploaded in the previous post. A pdf exported from Publisher and imported into Photo on the same PC produces garbage. I see way too many dozos who swoop into the Video Editing forum I frequent shouting BUG when it is basic user error so I'm just trying to ascertain a best practice workflow. That said, how can a pdf made in APub have corrupted fonts UNLESS RASTERISED when imported back into the same prog.

[Bryce]

I just reviewed your PDF and your AFPUB file and there is nothing wrong with either. I would say your print driver or something else is removing the font. The typefaces in the PDF are embedded subsets of Calibri exactly as they should be when inspecting with Enfocus Pitstop (prepress software).

What are you printing the PDF from?

Does it view on screen wrong in the program that is printing the PDF?

I'f Im understanding correctly you are exporting to a PDF, only to open the PDF back in Affinity? If a font is missing, which if you are opening the file to edit, it will strip out the embedded font, then Affinity should be asking you about the font that is missing and how you want to replace it or leave it missing.

If you want to see what the printed PDF will look like, you should be using Acrobat or an imposition software with RIP or a postscript printer. Opening it back up for editing will always make it wrong. You could drop it in affinity as an embedded document and it might show right.

[DavidDoesAffinity]

Bryce. Read what I posted!

[Bryce]

2 minutes ago, DavidDoesAffinity said:

Bryce. Read what I posted!

I did but that is not the case.

Is Acrobat looking wrong? It doesn't look like what you are describing.

[Bryce]

I opened it in Photo and I see what you are talking about with the font replacement - that is completely normal with ligatures and glyphs. If you notice it's always the same character for the "tt". Programs like this replace characters to be more appropriate such as "fi", "tj" or "fl", and 'tt' along with "rt" is another common one. if the font has the replacement, it will change the 2 characters into one custom character so it doesn't look goofy. 

As for the "I print from Acrobat and all black text has a white shadow."..

That could be several issues depending on what type a printer it is. My first guess is that black is not overprintning and therefore the magenta is knocked out. If your printer is not 100% in registration between these your colors you will see a white gap that you describe. This is true for both inkjet and laser.

[firstdefence]

I wonder if the odd text change is because of ligatures ti and tt would be substituted.

[DavidDoesAffinity]

Acrobat looks right but prints with a white shadow. Photoshop opens the PDF and the fonts are fine.

I just want a good quality pdf that I can rely on.

 

[DavidDoesAffinity]

20 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I wonder if the odd text change is because of ligatures ti and tt would be substituted.

Excuse my Essex ignorance, but what are ligatures....in this context?

EDIT just read Bryce's explanation. Why doesn't Photoshop do the same thing?

It prints fine i from Acrobat if the pdf is rasterised.

[Bryce]

I explained in detail what ligatures are, but sometimes I don't communicate clearly. 

The top is using the ligature single character. it's a substitution for the bottom. It creates easier reading and flow for the reader. This happens quite often in typography, just as it did in your file. 

The reason photoshop opened it correctly was because it rasterized it with no editing capability at all before it was converted to a document to edit - basically it took a picture of what it looked like in acrobat.

[DavidDoesAffinity]

Thanks again. I had edited my post but maybe it had not shown up and your explanation of Photoshop's handling makes perfect sense. 

[DavidDoesAffinity]

Bryce, following your suggestion regarding registration, I went into the service menu of my Brother laser and did a reregistration and confirm that printing from Acrobat no longer prints with the white shadow. Than you for the heads up on this. The only time I ever do anything like that is with my DVD robotic printers.

Coming from an older version of Quark and PS has thrown up some leading points (no pun intended) for sure.

Thanks again.

[Alfred]

On 9/28/2019 at 7:31 PM, Bryce said:

I explained in detail what ligatures are, but sometimes I don't communicate clearly.

You mentioned that characters are sometimes replaced to be “more appropriate” and you mentioned ligatures and glyphs, but you didn’t attempt to define those terms. In your ‘fi’ example, using the separate glyphs (letter forms) would result in the terminal of the ‘f’ clashing with the dot on the ‘i’, so a ligature (multiple characters combined to form a single glyph) with no dot is used instead.

[Bryce]

9 hours ago, DavidDoesAffinity said:

Bryce, following your suggestion regarding registration, I went into the service menu of my Brother laser and did a reregistration and confirm that printing from Acrobat no longer prints with the white shadow. Than you for the heads up on this. The only time I ever do anything like that is with my DVD robotic printers.

Coming from an older version of Quark and PS has thrown up some leading points (no pun intended) for sure.

Thanks again.

No problem. Another solution, that is if the printer supports it, so to check the box in affinity when exporting to a PDF, make sure that overprint black is specified in the export box. The only way this will work though is to be printing using a postscript driver/printer from Acrobat. It will also make your blacks more dense.

 

We use that quite often to ensure no gaps throughout the print run.