Whenever I try to copy and paste art from the pdfs I always have a black background on the image. Is there any way to get rid of this?
Instead of Copy+Paste, Adobe has a "Snapshot" Tool under Tools>Select&Zoom>
Chief Technical Officer
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Instead of Copy+Paste, Adobe has a "Snapshot" Tool under Tools>Select&Zoom>
Careful there. With the Snapshot tool, you're taking a screenshot of the pixels that happen to be displayed, at whatever the currently displayed resolution is, which may mean a lower quality result. Using the Selection tool, you're actually copying the object at full resolution.
Also, using the Selection tool on an object lets you get only the object, without the background, preserving any transparency. So if you select a magic item, for example, you effectively get only the magic item, and can easily drop it onto any background you like. But if you use the Snapshot tool, you get a square area containing whatever was there, so the item, background, and any surrounding text are now part of the image, and removing them requires effort on your part.
I'm guessing the problem is that whatever application he's pasting into doesn't correctly understand transparency (or it understands it, but fills it with either the currently selected color or the currently selected background color).
That would explain a couple problems I've had. Thanks for the info Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I paste into paint
I'm not a Windows user, but I do have enough experience to know that Windows Paint is one of the crappiest graphic applications in the history of man, and it doesn't surprise me that using it makes you go to greater effort and ends in a lower-quality result. I know there are free packages that are much better in every way, but again, I'm not a Windows user, so I couldn't tell you the names of any of them. Perhaps somebody can jump in with some suggestions?
What Vic said.
I don't use it, but I heard gimp is pretty good.
In Paint, you can paste the image with the black background as stated above and the use the "fill with color" tool to make all the black areas white (just remember to change the color to white). It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it works for non-artistic type like me...
I use Gimp in both Windows and Linux and its quite advanced. You should have no trouble copying and pasting art.
However Fray has the right idea - we can't really solve the OPs problem without knowing what software he is working with.
Hm, if the image looks right, but there is a black background, I would quess that they are using mask overlays (alpha channels) with the pictures. It means that there is another, invisible color channel in black & white, which tells the image what portions of it should be transparent. If you copy the image and paste it into another software, and the background is black, I'd think that the selection tool of acrobat doesn't copy the alpha channel correctly. In other words I would think the problem is not with other softwares understanding transparency, but in acrobat's selection tool itself. I downloaded the player's guide and tried to copy & paste a picture to Adobe Photoshop, and it indeed has black background. I think Photoshop should be combatible with acrobat quite well, so I would quess that the selection tool just isn't meant to copy pictures with transparency... Haven't tried in other software, or Photoshop in mackintosh, so I might be totally wrong too...
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Chief Technical Officer
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Hm, if the image looks right, but there is a black background, I would quess that they are using mask overlays (alpha channels) with the pictures. It means that there is another, invisible color channel in black & white, which tells the image what portions of it should be transparent. If you copy the image and paste it into another software, and the background is black, I'd think that the selection tool of acrobat doesn't copy the alpha channel correctly. In other words I would think the problem is not with other softwares understanding transparency, but in acrobat's selection tool itself. I downloaded the player's guide and tried to copy & paste a picture to Adobe Photoshop, and it indeed has black background. I think Photoshop should be combatible with acrobat quite well, so I would quess that the selection tool just isn't meant to copy pictures with transparency... Haven't tried in other software, or Photoshop in mackintosh, so I might be totally wrong too...
Excellent thought.
I just opened one of our PDFs (with Adobe Reader 8.1.1 for Mac OS X), selected an image with transparency, and dragged it to my Desktop. The result was a TIFF file with an alpha channel. I opened that in Graphic Converter, where it shows exactly as I'd expect—the image has a transparent background. Just to be sure, I viewed the alpha channel, and verified that it is correctly configured (it's white in the transparent areas, and black in the non-transparent areas).
However, if I use the selection tool, and instead of dragging the object to the desktop, I copy it and then use Graphic Converter to create a new document from the current clipboard, I do indeed get a black background instead of a transparent background, and the image has no alpha channel. So it looks like the act of copying in Reader does remove the alpha channel (and thus the transparency), but the act of drag-and-drop maintains it. So I'd look for an application you can drag-and-drop into.
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Chief Technical Officer
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In Paint, you can paste the image with the black background as stated above and the use the "fill with color" tool to make all the black areas white (just remember to change the color to white). It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it works for non-artistic type like me...
The problem with that is that it will also replace any black pixels that are on the edges of the actual image (or are contiguous to those pixels). In fact, I've just done that, ensuring that the tolerance of my paintbucket tool was set to 0 to minimize the damage, and when zoomed in, it's clear that the edge detail is not as good in the copy as in the original.
I just opened one of our PDFs (with Adobe Reader 8.1.1 for Mac OS X), selected an image with transparency, and dragged it to my Desktop. The result was a TIFF file with an alpha channel.
I tried to drag and drop in windows (from player's guide again) and the result was jpeg with black background. I know that it's not possible to include alpha channel in jpeg, but it's sad that Windows somehow decides to change it to jpeg. In other words I think that in Windows, the drag&drop is actually same as copy&paste, while in OSx drag&drop duplicates the actual image file. I'm so going to get rid of Windows and buy a Mac.
Have you tried dragging directly from Reader to an open-but-empty Photoshop document?
Yes, it also has a black background. I think I'll have to look in to this some more, but seems that there's no easy way of copying the art in windows. Acrobat professional does the trick better, because there is also save image option, which doesn't include alpha channel either, but the background is white.
Oh, and if you are using Photoshop, you can just open a pdf-file, choose select:images and pick the image you want. It opens with transparency and everything. That still doesn't solve the problem for non-photoshop users with windows...
Try right-clicking the object and "Save as..." It should give you an option to save as .tiff.
edit: Note - You have to select the object first.
edit2: Okay, it saves it as a .tiff, but still has no alpha layer. It does make the alpha layer white instead of black, which is preferable at times.
Try right-clicking the object and "Save as..." It should give you an option to save as .tiff.
edit: Note - You have to select the object first.
edit2: Okay, it saves it as a .tiff, but still has no alpha layer. It does make the alpha layer white instead of black, which is preferable at times.
And that option is only available in Acrobat professional, not reader. I find this very interesting, especially if this happens just because OS doesn't support it. I'd like to see a tiff-image extracted from pdf in mac...
Careful there. With the Snapshot tool, you're taking a screenshot of the pixels that happen to be displayed, at whatever the currently displayed resolution is, which may mean a lower quality result.
Well, in Adobe Reader (I'm using 8.1.1) under Edit > Preferences > General > Basic Tools you can select Use fixed resolution for Snapshot tool images, which will then allow you to set a fixed resolution when using the tool. Personally I have it set to 420 pixels/inch, which is enough for my needs.
Well, in Adobe Reader (I'm using 8.1.1) under Edit > Preferences > General > Basic Tools you can select Use fixed resolution for Snapshot tool images, which will then allow you to set a fixed resolution when using the tool. Personally I have it set to 420 pixels/inch, which is enough for my needs.
That is true. It still doesn't allow to have greater resolution than in the original image, and it still just copies what shows in your monitor, so I think it gets you worse results than in copying the actual original image. Of course that still might be a better way to do it in windows-based Acrobat, 'cause you don't get the black background. So yeah, good notice =).
Also, using the Selection tool on an object lets you get only the object, without the background, preserving any transparency. So if you select a magic item, for example, you effectively get only the magic item, and can easily drop it onto any background you like. But if you use the Snapshot tool, you get a square area containing whatever was there, so the item, background, and any surrounding text are now part of the image, and removing them requires effort on your part.
The issue I've had is when using the Selection Tool on maps. Every so often, when I Copy/Paste a map, the image doesn't include any of the map's text such as location names and identifiers. When I Copy/Paste text, the location names and identifiers from the maps wind up included in that text.
I'm guessing the location names and identifiers on the maps are actually on a transparent layer above the map image and Adobe Reader considers them to be text rather than graphics.
So... if I want to have the location names, room numbers, or whatnot on the maps, I have to use the Snapshot tool.
Every so often, when I Copy/Paste a map, the image doesn't include any of the map's text such as location names and identifiers.
Yes, that' because the map is pixel graphic and the texts are vector graphics. If they embed the texts into the picture, the text becomes a little blurry, because of the anti-aliasing. So the texts aren't on different layer in the image, they are not in the image at all. Or this is how I think it is.
I have absolutely no idea what you just said but I'm surmising it means the text isn't actually part of the image so if I want it included in the image, I have to use Snapshot.
Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry but it's quite difficult to try to explain technical issues when I'm not a native speaker =). But yea, like you said.
Not an issue. I'm not exactly "the sharpest blade in the armory" so most difficulties in comprehension are generally my fault rather than anyone else's.
Basically there are two types of graphics. The first is what are used to and is made up of thousands of tiny dots (called pixels when projected from a screen and dots when printed since they are then concerned with bleeding... thoough that isn't important here) and the second is more math based and called vectors. In a piece of vector art you have two point and math telling the computer to put a line between them. It might say to put a curve or several curves on the line, what color to make the line and so on. Now once you have this relationship between the points set you can make that graphic as big or small as you want and the relationship will always stay the same and look just as clean and sharp. So it could be one inch tall or 100 inches tall and be the same size file and look just as good.
Fonts are classic examples of vectors, that is why they scale so well. Most graphic designers will convert their typed stuff into just the vector (removing the need for the font to be loaded in the OS so it can be printed anywhere). The downside is since the fonts are often made for printing they don't always look as good on screen (some fonts look great on screen... depends on how they were designed and what they were designed for).
Many of the lower end or common graphic programs can't handle both types of graphics though and so don't know what to do with the vectors... which is where your problem comes from. By taking the snap shot you are copying a rasterized (which means turned into pixels for a display on the screen since we don't see things as mathmatical formulas) copy of the entire image into your product. Other products (like Photoshop or Illustrator for example) would allow you to "Flatten" the image down into a single rasterized image with out loosing resolution (at least putting the vectors to the same resolution as the rest of the image).
Anyway... don't know if you actually cared about any of that... just thought I would throw it out there.
Sean Mahoney
What he said.