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January 8, 2026

P: Dynamic Text causing photoshop save to PDF to flatten file

  • January 8, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 84 views

Came across an error today where I saved a photoshop file as a pdf and when i opened it I could not highlight ANY text in the PDF.

 

I tried numerous settings to fix this but the problem ended up being with the use of Dynamic Text

 

Only when I switched off the Dynamic Text layers before saving was I then able to highlight text in the PDF.

 

It did not matter where in the layer stack the Dynamic Text was. Above, Below didn't matter.  If they were visible the entire document was flattened to image.

 

I tried this on a complex document and also a basic document with nothing but a Dynamic Text box and another normal text layer

The Dynamic Text layer flattened or rastered the entire file

2 replies

January 8, 2026

Thanks for coming back to me and I'm glad you were able to replicate it. I was also able to open the file afterwards in Photoshop and all layers were present.

It happens whether you have "Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabibilities" checked or not. Almost like a security permission is activated that prevents "copying of text, images or other content". Maybe that is a better description than rasterizing or flattening and may be an avenue to look at.

BrettN
Community Manager
Community Manager
January 8, 2026

Thanks for reporting this. I'm able to reproduce the behavior. The interesting thing is that if you open the file in Photoshop, it is still fully layered and editable. So it seems the information is all there in the file but Acrobat is not able to work with it properly. With Dynamic Text being a pretty new thing in Photoshop it is likely that Acrobat needs an update to read these files correctly. I'll get this logged