Acrobat / Photoshop Weirdness

[lnivin]

We have a customer PDF that has a rescreen image. The customer didn't want to pay for correcting, but it had a name on the address label. From Acrobat, we opened the image in Photoshop, covered the address with a white box but did not blur or do anything to correct the rescreen.

The saved PDF has a MUCH smoother image and it prints as if it is a nice high-res image.

Can anyone tell me what Photoshop did without me knowing it's doing anything? I checked Photoshop's preferences and don't see any active filters/plugins.

Thank you!

Linda

 

[meddington]

Opening a PDF in photoshop Rasters the file, and you have the ability to select the resolution when opening the file. I suspect the resolution fairly low which effectively softened the rescreen issue. It also likely softened/rastered any text/ linework, so beware!

 

[DCurry]

The OP didn't open the PDF in Photoshop - she edited the image in Photoshop using Acrobat's "Edit Image" command, I believe.

 

[meddington]

Aha. Missed that. In that case I don't have an explanation.
?

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I find it hard to visualise the problem and how it can occur. I know a PDF can have alternative images, high res and low res. If it is this kind of PDF and you edit the low res you would break the link to the high res. If the image is highly JPG compressed that could be an error source.
An alternative is to paste the lower res image into an unaltered file. right click to get the edit crop, and crop the edited image to the area you edited. then match the position over the original, and you will only have the deteriorated quality over the area that was manipulated. It's a long work around… but it's all i can come up with at the moment.

The moral of the story is that if your client refuses to pay and gives you an assignment to "fix" something remember editing in PDF can be a gamble and will sometimes give you unexpected results which gives you more work than doing it right from the start. Should you accept the risks and get nothing for it? To me that seems unreasonable (though I do confess that I sometimes fall in that trap myself, but allways insist that the customer approve the PDF and say that there may or may not be some unwanted effect so please verify the PDF)

 

[lnivin]

I did edit just the image from Acrobat and when opening it has no dialog box for resolution choices. PitStop says it is zip compressed.

At least now I know to keep my eyes open in the future.

 

[cjwworld]

if you had Pitstop, why didn't you use it to delete the offending words? I use Pitstop alot for editing.

 

[lnivin]

Because the words were part of the rescreened scan.

 

[cjwworld]

Because the words were part of the rescreened scan.

oh, okay, my guess you couldn't select object anyway.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

With pitstop you can make a square to cover the text? That's what I use pitstop for

 

[lnivin]

It had a very light mottled background. :-(

 

[michaelejahn]

without knowing what you mean by "PDF that has a rescreen image" it is hard to say - perhaps the part of the PDF was an image, and when you were in Acrobat and used the Adobe Acrobat Touchup tool - you opened the image in Photoshop, and when you placed the 'white box' - which i suspect you mean "we created a rectangle and filled this with white" - when you saved this back to Acrobat - it was down sampled. I am fairly certain a dialog box appeared, and you probably simply clicked okay without reading it. It may have even changed the color mode, depending on what you filled the white with. Can't really be sure unless I have that PDF and also knew which version of Acrobat and Photoshop and on what platform.

 

[lnivin]

We didn't think we clicked anything, but I believe that is the answer. Thank all of you!