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I have a PDF with a transparent background (verified by opening it up in Adobe Illustrator). I can't figure out how to import it into Gimp preserving the transparent background (it comes with a white background). I know I can go through a bunch of steps to make the white transparent and mask the appropriate areas, but it seems like my ask is a no-brainer. Is there something I am missing?

Thanks in advance, Chuck

Chuck Han
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    Cf. the quote from the pdf specification in [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/32882780/1729265) - by specification the there is nothing like a "PDF with a transparent background", *a backdrop that is pure white and fully opaque* is always assumed. So gimp merely follows the specification when importing the background add white. – mkl Jul 23 '18 at 04:45
  • Thanks, mkl. I didn't realize the PDF spec didn't have background transparency. Makes sense now... – Chuck Han Jul 23 '18 at 06:18
  • Of course one could create a gimp feature request for an "import PDF page objects"; that would circumvent the white-backdrop requirement... ;) – mkl Jul 23 '18 at 13:04
  • I'm not sure that would work if there are white areas in the non-background objects, right? PDFs that are created by Adobe with a transparent background must be doing something custom to indicate a transparent area, right? – Chuck Han Jul 23 '18 at 17:04
  • Nothing special. Many, probably most PDFs have a certain amount of transparent area through which you usually see the backdrop, white per definition. – mkl Jul 23 '18 at 19:26

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I've had a similar problem but I managed to find a workaround that's handy if you don't need to import a lot of PDFs. I simply import the PDF to Inkscape, save it as SVG and then open the SVG with GIMP. Or just export it as PNG since GIMP imports it as a bitmap anyway.

Tommy Seth
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