Imported colour-PDFs show up in FH8 as greyscale only

[Martin Sammtleben]

Hi,

I'm having a problem with PDFs supplied by a client, generated from
Microstation (PC) with Distiller 5, PDF vers. 1.3

When importing those into FH8 they loose their colours and show up in
shades of grey instead. That used to work fine in the past but not any
longer.

I tried to export the files from Acrobat as EPS and distill them to
vers. 1.2 without success.

I need editable vectors so rastering is not an option.

Any ideas??

--
Cheers Martin

[Martin Gamache]

Best solution would be to open in Illustrator and save as .ai version 8 and
to open that in FH. This will only work if yuo have illustrator though. I
imagine that you need the colors now to seperate the CAD linework. Shoot me
an email offlist if you dont have Illustrator. I can probably convert the
file for you.

mg


"Martin Sammtleben" <nosp@m.is> wrote in message
news:nosp-BE5134.02451928072004@forums.macromedia.com...

> Hi,
>
> I'm having a problem with PDFs supplied by a client, generated from
> Microstation (PC) with Distiller 5, PDF vers. 1.3
>
> When importing those into FH8 they loose their colours and show up in
> shades of grey instead. That used to work fine in the past but not any
> longer.
>
> I tried to export the files from Acrobat as EPS and distill them to
> vers. 1.2 without success.
>
> I need editable vectors so rastering is not an option.
>
> Any ideas??
>
> --
> Cheers Martin

[Martin Sammtleben]

In article <C6LNc.16768$iK.16549@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink .net>,
"Martin Gamache" <alpinemappingguild@earthlink.net> wrote:

> I imagine that you need the colors now to seperate the CAD linework.

Yep, I also need to work on the widths of the lines.

> Shoot me
> an email offlist if you dont have Illustrator. I can probably convert the
> file for you.

Thanks for the kind offer! It's on its way. :-)

What still puzzles me is that I'm pretty sure getting PDFs from that
same client in the past that imported into FH *preserving* the colours.

--
Cheers Martin

[Martin Sammtleben]

In article <nosp-BE5134.02451928072004@forums.macromedia.com>,
Martin Sammtleben <nosp@m.is> wrote:

> I'm having a problem with PDFs supplied by a client, generated from
> Microstation (PC) with Distiller 5, PDF vers. 1.3
>
> When importing those into FH8 they loose their colours and show up in
> shades of grey instead. That used to work fine in the past but not any
> longer.

Well, I solved my problem.

I again exported the PDF from Acrobat as an EPS and ran it through
Distiller.

However this time I used the "Screen" setting and the colours were
preserved when importing the resulting PDF into FH.

I guess it had to do something with the settings in the "color" tab of
Distillers job-options dialog.

Also many thanks to Martin who gave it a try!

--
Cheers Martin

[Judy Arndt]

Martin,

This confirms my findings that even FHMX cannot properly interpret PDFs that
contain spot inks. If colors are all CMYK, it can interpret the color info.

Judy Arndt

Martin Sammtleben wrote:

> I again exported the PDF from Acrobat as an EPS and ran it through
> Distiller.
>
> However this time I used the "Screen" setting and the colours were
> preserved when importing the resulting PDF into FH.