Really puzzled with PDFs in Photoshop

[srabin99]

I have a 20 page PDF file that I am opening up in Photoshop CS2 because I have to make a artwork replacement on each page.

When I open the document, I get a screen with thumbnails of each of the 20 pages. If I choose all of the pages to open, then after I make the change to each page, when I go to save the page, it wants to save it as a separate document and I then do not have the 20-page pdf file any more but 20 separate pdf files that I have to merge together with Adobe Acrobat.

Also, each individual new pdf page is MUCH bigger than the original document size. The original document was 160 KB and now each saved pdf page is almost 1 Mb in size. When I put them all together, what was a 160 KB size file is now 20 Mb which is really too big for this web site I want to use it on.

Does anybody have any answers for these issues? Using Adobe Acrobat 7.X.

thanks in advance,

Syd Rabin

 

[jmgalvin]

You’re using the wrong tool. The 20 page psdf was most likely generated from a text handling program, like a page layout or word processing program (Indesign, or Word, etc).

Photoshop is a single page app, designed to handle one image at a time. Page layout or word processing handle multiple pages. When you export pdf from photoshop you can only have one page because that’s all PS handles. Your only hope is to use a program that would allow you to combine the 20 pdfs generated by PS later. Acrobat/Acrobat pro does this and there are other apps that will combine multiple pdfs into one.

The reason the size is so big is that, when you import the pdf into PS, it’s rasterizing everything. In the original pdf, the text was simply text, which gives very small file sizes. Once you brought it into PS, you made the text one giant picture – BIG file size. When you export again to pdf, the resulting pdf is goliath. If you select a lower quality of jpeg compression on the pdf export, the text becomes fuzzy. If you select highest quality, the file size is huge.

If each individual page had originally been done in PS (doubtful) and exported to pdf, that pdf would have retained the text as text and the file size would have been small. If the original user had checked the layers box in the PS Save As window, the text layers would have been retained in the pdf and subsequent opening in PS would still have the text (on its own layer) as pure text.

There is no easy solution to your problem, unless you have other applications to use. If I were in your situation, I’d open the pdf in Acrobat pro and export all images to jpeg or tiff; then open the ones I needed to edit in PS and save for web. Then I’d place the original pdf into a page layout app, and place the edited jpegs from PS over the originals in the pdf. Then export for a screen quality (web) pdf.


Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[srabin99]

Thanks for your detailed explanation. The problem with your recommendation is that the whole original PDF file appears to be nothing but graphics with text as part of the graphics. There are no "graphic" components to the PDF, the whole thing is graphcs, so exporting the graphical parts I want to change is not going to work. I tried to make the changes (to part of the graphic) in Adobe which was OK, but changing the text part was difficult (I could, but I could not properly center it, etc.).

Might just be stuck in the mud on this one.