PrtScn button?
I am having the same problem. I have tried Photoshop, Irfanview and Nitro 3. None of them allow me to get at the map for 6-06 Hall of the Flesh Eaters. Being able to extract and print the unique maps at the correct size I find really useful when GMing as I am a relatively new GM.
I just loaded Hall of the Flesh Eaters in Nitro PDF Reader 3 and extracted the map with no issue. Are you using the "Extract Images" button?
Chief Technical Officer
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Ok, so there are two separate issues that have been brought up here... Not being able to extract images at all is one (see my response above on that); getting black images some or all of the time is another. And that's also not something under our control.
Many of the images in our PDFs include an alpha channel, which is (to oversimplify a bit) used to create transparency effects. How the alpha channel is displayed (and whether or not it is "flattened"—that is, permanently merged with the image as opposed to being kept on its own layer) is affected by some or all of the following: your operating system, the software you're using to extract the image, and the software you're using to view the image.
On Windows systems especially, it's very common for the alpha channel to be flattened into the image as a black background. It sounds like something in your setup is causing the alpha channel to be put in *front* of the image sometimes, which is certainly not very useful. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to solve the problem, other than trying different software.
Ok, so there are two separate issues that have been brought up here... Not being able to extract images at all is one (see my response above on that); getting black images some or all of the time is another. And that's also not something under our control.
Many of the images in our PDFs include an alpha channel, which is (to oversimplify a bit) used to create transparency effects. How the alpha channel is displayed (and whether or not it is "flattened"—that is, permanently merged with the image as opposed to being kept on its own layer) is affected by some or all of the following: your operating system, the software you're using to extract the image, and the software you're using to view the image.
On Windows systems especially, it's very common for the alpha channel to be flattened into the image as a black background. It sounds like something in your setup is causing the alpha channel to be put in *front* of the image sometimes, which is certainly not very useful. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to solve the problem, other than trying different software.
Everything you said is true...however, something changed in the way season 6 scenarios are authored. I can go open a season 5 in the software and cut and past maps, and the alpha layer is behind the maps. In season 6, it's always in front.
In any event, Nitro PDF's Extract Images functionality seems to default to a white background for transparency, rather than black, and has worked for every scenario I've tried it on.
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Chief Technical Officer
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The version of Adobe Creative Suite we're using changed at pretty much the same time as we transitioned from Season 5 to Season 6, and it's certainly possible that Adobe changed the way they create PDFs with images that have alpha channels, but it wouldn't be anything we did deliberately, and it's unlikely to be anything we have any control over.
Everything you said is true...however, something changed in the way season 6 scenarios are authored.
I can confirm that the export settings and process for our PDFs hasn't changed since mid-2011. We're still using all the same settings consistently for all PDF products. I agree with Vic's assertion that there's likely an underlying issue in the software used for generating them. However, many PDF readers (including between Adobe Reader on Mac vs PC) will have eccentricities with PDF display and image extraction. If there's a fix that we can determine on our end, we'd gladly apply it, but the source of these issues is pretty difficult to determine because of its inconsistency.
Everything you said is true...however, something changed in the way season 6 scenarios are authored.I can confirm that the export settings and process for our PDFs hasn't changed since mid-2011. We're still using all the same settings consistently for all PDF products. I agree with Vic's assertion that there's likely an underlying issue in the software used for generating them. However, many PDF readers (including between Adobe Reader on Mac vs PC) will have eccentricities with PDF display and image extraction. If there's a fix that we can determine on our end, we'd gladly apply it, but the source of these issues is pretty difficult to determine because of its inconsistency.
Oh, no doubt...the permutations are almost innumerable.
And I appreciate you taking the time to clarify that it wasn't a conscious change.
For what it's worth, you might want to try using Xpdf. I've been able to use it to extract images from the PDF successfully.
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I also use Gimp, although I use other things as well, for preparing images for VTT games (as well as for printing out maps for in-person games).
Are you on Linux? Are you comfortable using command-line utilities? If so, there is a tool "pdfimages" that when run can extract all the images from a single page. I just tried it on 06-03 extracting all the images on a page with a map, and there are a lot of images on that page, much more so than previous season scenarios had. Most of them are either full-page blank white, or parts of the decoration around the sides-- i.e., not of particular interest to a GM extracting images. However, the map was one of the images, and it didn't have the annotations. Perfect for printing a battlemap (if you want to spend time cutting it into 8.5"x11" pages and pasting later, and can afford the ink for a map this large...!), or for a VTT.
On Ubuntu, pdfimages is part of the poppler-utils package.
It extracts the images in ppm format, which is an uncompressed standard interchange format. Gimp can certainly read them. I also use the netpbm command-line utilities to convert (combining ppmtopgm on the alpha channel image plus pnmtopng is able to recreate an image with alpha channel intact, in case you want to do that). And, ImageMagick is another very useful command line tool for this sort of thing.
