2

Looking for a way to convert vector graphics – but not text objects – to rasters in PDFs using the javascript tool in Adobe Acrobat.

In one use case, a page has over 70k vector objects, which renders too slowly on screen.

The answers to this question do not suffice: Replacing vector images in a PDF with raster images. The html rendering tool created an SVG and preserved the vectors. It did not rasterize it. Imagemagick does not preserve text.

Thanks!

Community
  • 1
  • 1
motorbaby
  • 634
  • 7
  • 18

1 Answers1

0

(Acrobat) JavaScript has no access to the imaging layer. Therefore, there is no such option.

To solve your issue, you have a few possibilities:

• Open the vector PDF in a (raster) image editor which does properly interpret the PDF (such as Adobe Photoshop), and save the resulting image as PDF again.

• Get a vector graphics optimizer, which replaces excessive segments with longer curves (no product name comes to my mind, but I stumbled over references in the past). This may be very useful if your vector drawings were created with CAD systems with lousy PDF export (essentially plotting to PDF).

Max Wyss
  • 3,549
  • 2
  • 20
  • 26
  • Opening a PDF in a program like Photoshop does not remove transparency over image/gradient problems such as print-to-digital artifacts. Better would be two resave the PDF as a TIFF and then convert back to PDF. Neither of these preserves text, however, which is the point of the question. Something makes me doubt that JavaScript can not access layer information... Hmmm.... – motorbaby Apr 28 '15 at 20:22