Unlocking PDF's - For Maps & Images

[JDragon_ITTS]

I wanted to see if their was any possibility of being able to unlock the PDF's for the AP and associated products?

When using PDF's from previous AP's (RoRL) I was able to open the file in Photoshop to get a good copy of the maps and images to use for high quality digital handouts for my games.

Any way to do that with these?

Thanks

JD

[Dom C]

I would like to second this - I print the photos of NPCs out on 4x6 photo paper to show my players instead of trying to cover half of the module spoiler text so that they can see who they are talking to.

I don't do different voices very well, so this use is key to my GMing multiple NPCs; especially in town-centric adventures where I may switch roles dozens of times in a session.

[Samnell]

JDragon_ITTS wrote:

When using PDF's from previous AP's (RoRL) I was able to open the file in Photoshop to get a good copy of the maps and images to use for high quality digital handouts for my games.

For images, I just take a screenshot of the relevant page in my subscriber PDF, then go in and edit out the spoiler text. It can be done in Paint or any similar program.

I don't know how viable a strategy this is for maps. I suppose it might depend on how you're using them. My games are all PBEMs and I have longstanding mapping conventions that my players and I are used to, so I re-draw maps in those regardless.

[Vic Wertz]

You don't need to unlock them. Use the Selection tool in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, click the object you want, and copy/paste or drag-and-drop. (If it's a full-page background image, you have to Option-Click [Mac] or Ctrl-Click [Windows] to select it.)

[JDragon_ITTS]

Vic Wertz wrote:

You don't need to unlock them. Use the Selection tool in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, click the object you want, and copy/paste or drag-and-drop. (If it's a full-page background image, you have to Option-Click [Mac] or Ctrl-Click [Windows] to select it.)

This only gives you a 72 DPI image.

I'm looking for higher res images. Which if I'm able to open the original file / page with the needed image in photoshop it allows me to pull (or possibly generate) a higher res image to work with.

Doing the Copy/Paste from Reader does not. I took the area map from the RoRL players guide and did the following as a test. #1 opened the file in Reader 9 and using the select tool pasted it in to Photoshop. This gave me a 72DPI image.

Took the same file and opened it with photoshop, choose the page with the map and had it open it only. Photoshop has a process when you open it to set what resolution it generates the PSD file at. I choose 300dpi and it comes out looking good.

I take the 72dpi image I had copy/pasted and using photoshop to up the image size to 300dpi, it does it but is much blurrier than the one pulled by photoshop.

I under stand the need to protect your product, but its resulting in me not being able to get what I feel is full use of the product. I would be happy with a file that just had the maps and images that was unlocked while the original file stays locked for protection.

JD

BTW if other threads about this show up I'm sorry, since my first one did not I assumed it had been lost. I was not aware their is a delay.

[Vic Wertz]

JDragon_ITTS wrote:

Vic Wertz wrote:

You don't need to unlock them. Use the Selection tool in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, click the object you want, and copy/paste or drag-and-drop. (If it's a full-page background image, you have to Option-Click [Mac] or Ctrl-Click [Windows] to select it.)

This only gives you a 72 DPI image.

I think you're using the Marquee Zoom tool - the one with the magnifying glass icon. That tool does indeed take screen-resolution grabs. Use the Selection tool - the one with the text cursor/arrow icon. That lets you extract the images at the resolution that they are embedded in the document.

[daemonslye]

I use Advanced->Document Processing->Export All Images;
This pulls out images at (I think) their native res (150dpi for the cover drow image); Some of the images have a black background but should work for your purpose.

I am using Adobe 8 Standard

~D

[JDragon_ITTS]

Vic Wertz wrote:

I think you're using the Marquee Zoom tool - the one with the magnifying glass icon. That tool does indeed take screen-resolution grabs. Use the Selection tool - the one with the text cursor/arrow icon. That lets you extract the images at the resolution that they are embedded in the document.

I'm actually using the Snapshot Tool, which is the only one in Adobe Reader 9 that lets you get images, at least that I'm finding.

Thank you BTW for trying to help me get what I need.

JD

[JDragon_ITTS]

daemonslye wrote:

I use Advanced->Document Processing->Export All Images;

This pulls out images at (I think) their native res (150dpi for the cover drow image); Some of the images have a black background but should work for your purpose.

I am using Adobe 8 Standard

~D

I don't appear to have those options, but that may be because I'm using the free version of Reader not a full version of the software.

Thanks for the suggestion, an image at 150dpi would be a great start to getting what I'm looking for.

JD

[CluelessPlanewalker2]

JDragon_ITTS wrote:

daemonslye wrote:

I use Advanced->Document Processing->Export All Images;

This pulls out images at (I think) their native res (150dpi for the cover drow image); Some of the images have a black background but should work for your purpose.

I am using Adobe 8 Standard

~D

I don't appear to have those options, but that may be because I'm using the free version of Reader not a full version of the software.

Thanks for the suggestion, an image at 150dpi would be a great start to getting what I'm looking for.

JD

Actually if you downgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1 (the free version), you can do it the way Vic described. Only since Adobe Reader 9 this functionality seems to be unavailable.

[Davelozzi]

I was hoping to cut and paste stat blocks to make myself combat reference sheets similar to the excellent web enhancement that was made available for Red Hand of Doom. However whenever I cut and paste from the PDFs it replaces most (but not all) of the numbers in the stat blocks with blanks. Does anyone know why this is...and more importantly how it can be avoided?

[JDragon_ITTS]

daemonslye wrote:

I use Advanced->Document Processing->Export All Images;

This pulls out images at (I think) their native res (150dpi for the cover drow image); Some of the images have a black background but should work for your purpose.

I am using Adobe 8 Standard

~D

I was able to get access to a full version of Acrobat, and was able to do the Export All Images.

As you mentioned the images are at 150dpi, which while not as good as I was getting the other way its much better than the 72 I was getting before.

Thanks for the help.

JD

[Vic Wertz]

CluelessPlanewalker wrote:

Actually if you downgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1 (the free version), you can do it the way Vic described. Only since Adobe Reader 9 this functionality seems to be unavailable.

Sorry—I didn't realize Adobe had removed that from Reader 9!

At any rate, it has nothing to do with our document security settings, and everything to do with your software. The same is true with the black backgrounds you get when extracting images with transparency—some applications on some OSs convert transparent to black, and others convert it to white. (If you use Adobe Reader 8 on Mac OS X, you can actually drag images to your desktop, and they'll be saved as full-resolution TIFFs with full transparency preserved.)

[Vic Wertz]

Davelozzi wrote:

I was hoping to cut and paste stat blocks to make myself combat reference sheets similar to the excellent web enhancement that was made available for Red Hand of Doom. However whenever I cut and paste from the PDFs it replaces most (but not all) of the numbers in the stat blocks with blanks. Does anyone know why this is...and more importantly how it can be avoided?

Can you provide a specific example of a particular stat block?

[SirUrza]

As someone that has a vested interest in extracting maps from the PDFs, I can say that all the above methods work without unlocking the PDFs. :)

[JDragon_ITTS]

Vic Wertz wrote:

CluelessPlanewalker wrote:

Actually if you downgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1 (the free version), you can do it the way Vic described. Only since Adobe Reader 9 this functionality seems to be unavailable.

Sorry—I didn't realize Adobe had removed that from Reader 9!

At any rate, it has nothing to do with our document security settings, and everything to do with your software. The same is true with the black backgrounds you get when extracting images with transparency—some applications on some OSs convert transparent to black, and others convert it to white. (If you use Adobe Reader 8 on Mac OS X, you can actually drag images to your desktop, and they'll be saved as full-resolution TIFFs with full transparency preserved.)

Do you know if the security settings on the doc's will prevent them from being opened by Photoshop?

At this point as I mentioned above I was able to pull the images using the method described above to extract the images, how ever when done this way it does not take the text labels, which is both bad and good.

Thanks

JD

[Vivriel]

Vic Wertz wrote:

CluelessPlanewalker wrote:

Actually if you downgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1 (the free version), you can do it the way Vic described. Only since Adobe Reader 9 this functionality seems to be unavailable.

Sorry—I didn't realize Adobe had removed that from Reader 9!

I've just upgraded to Acrobat 9 and, to my dismay, discovered this problem. Upon further testing, it seems only Paizo PDF's exhibit this problem; PDF's from other sources, as well as those I create myself, allow me to select images with the select tool in Acrobat 9.

So it seems Paizo is doing something different to their PDF's that disables this function in 9. What, I've no idea, but could someone possibly investigate and maybe fix it for future products? It's something of a nuisance having to keep both Reader 8 and Acrobat 9 installed in order to run my games (online). I can live with it for now, but I don't see the viability of keeping Reader 8 around forever just because of Paizo PDF's.

Thanks in advance for giving your attention to this admittedly little problem!

[Dennis da Ogre]

Vivriel wrote:

I've just downgraded to Acrobat 9 and, to my dismay, discovered this problem.

I fixed your post. I have yet to discover anything good about Acrobat 9. It is a little cleaner interface but at the expense of nerfing half the features of the program. Boo. I'm "Upgrading" to 8.1.

[Davelozzi]

Vic Wertz wrote:

Davelozzi wrote:

whenever I cut and paste from the PDFs it replaces most (but not all) of the numbers in the stat blocks with blanks.

Can you provide a specific example of a particular stat block?

Sure, PF#1, Tsuto.

(I realize this is the Second Darness forum but I figured it the question was generic enough to include here rather than starting a new thread in the other forum).

[evilash]

Vic Wertz wrote:

(If you use Adobe Reader 8 on Mac OS X, you can actually drag images to your desktop, and they'll be saved as full-resolution TIFFs with full transparency preserved.)

You can do this in Windows as well, but the image is converted to BMP instead.

[Watcher]

Ugh.. Thread necromancy.

Finding a way to downgrade to Acrobat 8.X was a pain.. I hate that Acrobat took this functionality away in Reader 9.

Worse, Acrobat Reader 9 is forcing me to uninstall it before I can downgrade.

[fyatuk]

Watcher wrote:

Ugh.. Thread necromancy.

Finding a way to downgrade to Acrobat 8.X was a pain.. I hate that Acrobat took this functionality away in Reader 9.

Worse, Acrobat Reader 9 is forcing me to uninstall it before I can downgrade.

I gave up on Acrobat Reader a couple years ago. It's a bloated piece of crap. I switched to Foxit reader and haven't had any problems. Something like 10% of the file size too since Adobe added a bunch of net related crap to the free reader.

[eirip]

Sorry for the thread jack but this topic is close enough. I know there was a post on this before but I am unable to find it. How do I extract a map from adobe WITHOUT the numbers showing, or how do I edit said numbers out of the map?

Thanks in advance!!!!!!!!

[Vic Wertz]

eirip wrote:

Sorry for the thread jack but this topic is close enough. I know there was a post on this before but I am unable to find it. How do I extract a map from adobe WITHOUT the numbers showing, or how do I edit said numbers out of the map?

Thanks in advance!!!!!!!!

Using the Selection tool (NOT the Marquee tool) in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader 8 or earlier, click the map, and copy/paste or drag-and-drop. (If it's a full-page map, you may have to Option-Click [Mac] or Ctrl-Click [Windows] to select it.)

[eirip]

Vic Wertz wrote:

eirip wrote:

Sorry for the thread jack but this topic is close enough. I know there was a post on this before but I am unable to find it. How do I extract a map from adobe WITHOUT the numbers showing, or how do I edit said numbers out of the map?

Thanks in advance!!!!!!!!

Using the Selection tool (NOT the Marquee tool) in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader 8 or earlier, click the map, and copy/paste or drag-and-drop. (If it's a full-page map, you may have to Option-Click [Mac] or Ctrl-Click [Windows] to select it.)

Excellent Vic, thanks.