Acrobat Preflight 9 vs X

FileJockey

Well-known member
Upgraded to Acrobat Pro 10 from 9. Imported my customized Preflight profiles, which had been working great. Now, exact same profile run through Acrobat X gives different (and very bad) results. For instance, Convert to grayscale does not convert everything. It conspicuously ignores Separation:All. Also, after using the Flatten Transparency fixup, v.X Preflight somehow mangles the documents fonts (they become "Invalid Fonts"), and, weirdly reports an "error" that OpenType fonts are used (this is a profile to Analyze for PDF/X-1a which of course allows Open Type fonts).
I rely on this tool to standardize PDFs (also wrangling with PitStop Pro 11 - stupidly less functional than earlier versions).
Any ideas?
 
Upgraded to Acrobat Pro 10 from 9. Imported my customized Preflight profiles, which had been working great. Now, exact same profile run through Acrobat X gives different (and very bad) results.

Certainly bugs have been fixed and improvements made. So let's see what you've got.

For instance, Convert to grayscale does not convert everything. It conspicuously ignores Separation:All.

The new behavior (ignore) is correct. Separation All is a special thing and should never be converted.


Also, after using the Flatten Transparency fixup, v.X Preflight somehow mangles the documents fonts (they become "Invalid Fonts"),

Are you seeing this for ALL PDFs or just some? can you post one that demonstrates this problem?

and, weirdly reports an "error" that OpenType fonts are used (this is a profile to Analyze for PDF/X-1a which of course allows Open Type fonts).

Actually, PDF/X-1a does NOT allow native OpenType fonts. PDF/X-1a, however, allows for the raw font data (CFF or TTF) that can be extracted from an OpenType font. Perhaps you have actually used a native OT and weren't aware of it.

Again, we'd need to see a PDF that demonstrates the problem.
 
Attached is the current problem file (the font corruption does not happen with all files). Also attached is the preflight report generated after applying the stock Flatten transparency (high resolution) fix. Especially strange is that there don't seem to be any OpenTypes at all used in the document, but Preflight reports them as an error.
 

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  • Not For Sale handbill 120900flat.pdf
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  • Not For Sale handbill 120900flat_report.pdf
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I have found that you have to pay special attention to spot colors. If your document is not told to convert spot colors, it won't, no matter how hard yo try to make it.
 
Attached is the current problem file (the font corruption does not happen with all files). Also attached is the preflight report generated after applying the stock Flatten transparency (high resolution) fix. Especially strange is that there don't seem to be any OpenTypes at all used in the document, but Preflight reports them as an error.

If you open that file and look at the Fonts info (File->Properties->Fonts), it clearly shows them as native OpenType. I have verified this in the PDF structure.

So now we need to see (as I wrote in a separate message) the original PDF to see if they were there to begin with or some other process put them there.
 
Thanks for taking the time. Attached is the original file. You should see that those Type 1 fonts are not specified as Open Type here. They only "convert" to Open Type upon flattening.
 

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  • action-card-03a-printer.pdf
    639.5 KB · Views: 256
I have found that you have to pay special attention to spot colors. If your document is not told to convert spot colors, it won't, no matter how hard yo try to make it.

For globally changing spot colors I usually use Acrobat's Convert Colors panel (the little prism icon). Under Ink Manager you can convert all spot colors.
 
For globally changing spot colors I usually use Acrobat's Convert Colors panel (the little prism icon). Under Ink Manager you can convert all spot colors.

I also have issues with acrobat x. Not only does the ink manager fail to preview the spot colours but upon remapping a spot to a process colour alias it changes some of the elements line/stroke thicknesses. My workaround is to use pitstop but it is a lot slower as you have to load the document colours and change them one at a time. Acrobat 9 performed this function flawlessly. Every time there is an update I hope that this is one of the issues that gets fixed. I think this problem is part of a shift away from print across the whole of CS6 because indesign is not that robust either
 
I also have issues with acrobat x. Not only does the ink manager fail to preview the spot colours but upon remapping a spot to a process colour alias it changes some of the elements line/stroke thicknesses.

Robert - I am not follow you at all on these things. Can you post some screen shots and sample PDFs that demonstrate these problems.
 
Robert - I am not follow you at all on these things. Can you post some screen shots and sample PDFs that demonstrate these problems.

Hi Leonardr

I have included the following images

Original colours
Colours remapped in pitstop
Colours remapped in acrobat
Ink list with no colour for ink icons

The behaviour of acrobat x has been the same on snow leopard upgraded from 9 and a clean install on a clean install of lion

Many thanks

Rob
 

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  • no colours in ink list.png
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  • no colours in ink list.png
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  • original colours.png
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Thanks - but can I get the PDF that does with it? I need to see the specification of the colors in the PDF to understand the behavior and determine if it is correct or not.
 
Thanks - but can I get the PDF that does with it? I need to see the specification of the colors in the PDF to understand the behavior and determine if it is correct or not.

Hi Leonardr

The original file is 2.9MB but the site is not allowing it to be uploaded

Many thanks

Rob
 
Flattening ruins fonts in Acrobat Pro X

Flattening ruins fonts in Acrobat Pro X

Hi, just hoping to return to original thread for a moment. I am still experiencing mangled fonts upon flattening. In this case, glyphs go missing (actually still visible, but technically "missing").
Attached is original file. Running the PDF/X verification shows missing glyphs after flattening.
In truth, this would happen in Acrobat 9 sometimes, too.
 
Last edited:
Hi, just hoping to return to original thread for a moment. I am still experiencing mangled fonts upon flattening. In this case, glyphs go missing (actually still visible, but technically "missing").
Attached is original file. Running the PDF/X verification shows missing glyphs after flattening.
In truth, this would happen in Acrobat 9 sometimes, too.

Without a file to look at, we can't comment :(.
 
Right, sorry. This would not upload. "Missing" glyphs appear after running Acrobat Preflight flattener.
https://acrobat.com/#d=rU4VY1zT8dx2Ey4iIisl-Q
BTW, why did Acrobat.com menu items disappear from Acrobat X Pro? It had been a menu option in previous versions. Now there is just SendNow Online, inferior to Acrobat.com, I think.

Thanks for the file!

I am unable to reproduce this with the current 10.1.4 version of Acrobat X. Can you confirm that you are also on the current build?

Thanks!
 

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