I'd like to mark up my Paizo pdfs using Preview on the Mac, but I get a warning message that my pdf is encrypted and I do not have the ownership needed to do this.
Additionally, it would be useful if I could extract individual images, such as the map layer without the location keys. Any advice on how I might be able to do these things?
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Additionally, it would be useful if I could extract individual images, such as the map layer without the location keys. Any advice on how I might be able to do these things?
not sure in preview, but you can do this in adobe reader 8 (they took out he ability in 9 for some reason) I believe the select tool will select the map without the locations.
For Preview annotations, have you tried printing a copy to PDF? (PDF button in lower left corner of print window in 10.5).
If this is something that can be made easier, I'd like Paizo to look into it. It decreases the value of my PDFs if I can't mark them up or extract the maps easily.
At present it is much easier to remove/redact a watermark than it is to alter the PDF for legitimate purposes. That's disappointing, it always sucks to be a paying customer who loses functionality for security purposes.
When you look at the PDF market, I'm sure you're seeing a disproportionate number of Virtual Tabletop Users. It might be worthwhile to implement a way we can retrieve layers securely and easily, perhaps by appending the raw maps watermarked to the end of the file?
Even so, being able to annotate my files in my viewer of choice (Preview) is functionality I feel I have paid for.
For Preview annotations, have you tried printing a copy to PDF? (PDF button in lower left corner of print window in 10.5).
Excellent idea, and yes this works — but it doesn't print the bookmarks, and doesn't really help with the layers issue. Without bookmarks, annotation isn't worth it.
I know Paizo loves us PDF users. I only ask that I get the most functionality out of the premium I've paid.
The saga continues:
I can't seem to view individual layers in Adobe Reader (8 or 9). Is this just not a feature? If so, I am crestfallen.
not sure in preview, but you can do this in adobe reader 8 (they took out he ability in 9 for some reason) I believe the select tool will select the map without the locations.
Aha! This works! Thanks to you sir.
Chief Technical Officer
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Ok... there are really many different things at work here.
We'd love to provide you with the ability to add bookmarks or annotations to PDFs, but the control that we have to secure and not secure things isn't very finely grained—the same control that prevents you from removing our watermarks *also* prevents you from adding bookmarks or annotations.
If we're ever given the ability to elect to give you those abilities while still protecting our watermarks, we 'd be happy to take advantage of them.
(And please let's not get into a discussion of the effectiveness of watermarking, or whether we should watermark or not. We've evaluated the pros and cons already, and we've made our decision; it's not up for debate.)
As for image extraction, that appears to be a shortcoming in Preview. (At least, I can only find an area selection tool, not an object selection tool.) Certainly, it's not something we prevent, as you can extract objects using Adobe Reader 8 and other PDF viewers.
As for the bookmarks not being transferred, that's another limitation of Preview, and has nothing to do with security. Preview just has a weird implementation of bookmarks. In my experience, if you open up even a non-secured PDF with bookmarks and just do a "Save As..." to a new file, you'll lose the existing bookmarks. (And Adobe Reader doesn't seem to like the bookmarks that you create in Preview, either.)
Next, the "layer" issue is complex. We don't flatten our documents, so you can extract objects when you have an appropriate PDF viewer, but we don't currently provide the ability to turn separate layers on and off. Mainly, that's because the Layers function is intended to provide alternate forms of visibility, and all of the objects in our PDFs are intended to always be visible. (However, we did just have a discussion about this last week, and that may be changing later this year.)
Finally, I'd like to address this statement: "...being able to annotate my files in my viewer of choice (Preview) is functionality I feel I have paid for."
We state the following at the top of each section under paizo.com/store/downloads (I've added italics for emphasis):
"PDF downloads are watermarked with the purchaser's name and require Adobe Reader 5.0 or later. PDFs employ content protection and cannot be modified, but they do not employ digital rights management (DRM)."
Now, that said, we'll do our best to provide functionality and support to every customer regardless of your PDF viewer, but it's not something we can guarantee. The fact is, if you're using a non-Adobe Reader PDF viewer, you may well run into problems to which the only answer we can provide is "use Adobe Reader." It's happened twice before, when FoxIt Reader had a bug that caused some pages in some of our PDFs to display as blank, and when Poppler-based PDF readers on Linux had a bug that prevented the character "A" from appearing in some of our PDFs. (Both of those bugs have been fixed.)
Thanks for taking the time to respond at length Vic.
I was mainly griping about not being able to extract textless maps, but it turns out you can select and copy images in Adobe Reader 8, so that's a non-issue for me now.
Annotating would be nice, but it isn't a deal-breaker as long as I get my maps. Here's hoping the technology develops to the point where it's not a tradeoff with security.
Thanks again!