Acrobat Pro DC Preflight Identifying Multiple Color Filled / Stroked Type

[Bill W]

I am attempting to identify text that is either stroked, filled and stroked or just filled with more than one color using Acrobat Preflight. I have attached screens shots of two custom checks I have created. The one labeled Will Identify finds type that is either just filled or filled and stroked with more than one color. The one labeled Will Not Identify will neither find the type that is only stroked or the type that is both filled and stroked.

Seems the Will Not ought to work as it has a qualifier of stroke elements. Feedback, anyone. Thanks

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Create some text in Illustrator or InDesign and apply a fill and a stroke to the text.

Then create a PDF export, plain vanilla, PDF/X etc.

The result is that Adobe software does not create the PDF with a single text element as was the case in the authoring application. It will create an outlined vector path for the stroke and a filled font, which are both stacked on top of or behind each other, depending on how the stroke should be stacked in the “Z order”.

So my question is, how are you getting text that has a stroke applied to it in the PDF?

One can directly apply a stroke to text via PitStop Pro, however this is not how most PDF creators would be producing stroked text.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/6801080/6801080-6072991086639407106


Stephen Marsh

 

[Bill W]

Your explanation of how Acrobat renders stroked type makes sense when I look at a preflight check I made to select “Graphic state properties for stroke - Stroke is non-zero on more than one plate”, the check identifies each stroked letter as a separate graphic element. The challenge with this is check that it only shows the first 42 instances of the stroked (graphic elements) letters. Any letters above a count of 42 will not show.

Interestingly when I add the canned, and locked check, named “Text with stroked outlines” to my preflight check and preflight a file with stroked type, the report indicates there are no problems.

FYI - I have attached the file that contains vector and type elements I created to test my preflight checks.

 

[mattbeals]

I am attempting to identify text that is either stroked, filled and stroked or just filled with more than one color using Acrobat Preflight. I have attached screens shots of two custom checks I have created. The one labeled Will Identify finds type that is either just filled or filled and stroked with more than one color. The one labeled Will Not Identify will neither find the type that is only stroked or the type that is both filled and stroked.

Seems the Will Not ought to work as it has a qualifier of stroke elements. Feedback, anyone. Thanks

You can use the preflight module to identify:
text that is less than or equal to 30pt AND "Text is filled and stroked"=true
text that is less than or equal to 30pt AND "text is stroked=true"
text that is less than or equal to 30pt AND "fill is non-zero on more than one plate"

Those are three different checks

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Interestingly when I add the canned, and locked check, named “Text with stroked outlines” to my preflight check and preflight a file with stroked type, the report indicates there are no problems.

Exactly, the text in the native file contains both a fill and a stroke with no paths, only text/fonts.

The PDF will have text for the fill, however it will also have paths for the stroke – which is NOT how the original file was built.

So there is no way to check for “stroked text” in the PDF as the text/font only has a fill, the PDF conversion has duplicated the font and outlined it to paths to create the stroke.

PitStop Pro can directly stroke text and this would be picked up with a preflight that was checking for “stroked text”.

Both Adobe and Esko PDF files appear to work the same way when exporting.

EDIT: I just tried saving as .ps and Distilling, now there is one text element for the fill and a separate text element for the stroke with no fill! So unlike exporting direct to PDF, Distilling keeps the font/text as a true text (but it still duplicates the element, when originally there was only a single text element).


Stephen Marsh

 

[Bill W]

Stephen - looks like you hit the nail on the head by using Distiller, as now I can identify stroked type to be seen as type and not be seen as each letter as a individual graphic. I can also identify stroked only text, stroked and filled type and filled only type as having more that one color. I did try the few variables I could find when saving PDF directly from Illustrator and none of them help to meet my needs to identify elements properly in preflighting.

Thanks. - I guess in some cases there is still a need to use Distiller to make a PDF file.

Matt - thanks for the hint to make 3 different checks and not to try in include 3 different qualifiers in one check.