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27

Issues with PDF produced by macOS Quartz PDFContext

Participant ,
Nov 19, 2023 Nov 19, 2023

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I'm using Acrobat Pro on Windows and I'm increasing seeing print issues with files produced by mac users and its always the macOS Quartz PDFContext listed as producer. The files open and preview fine but either cannot print or print absolute garbage. 

 

The majority of the time trying to fix in Illustrator leads to more issues due to missing or transalation of fonts between operating systems. I was under the impression the point of PDF was it's portability. 


Is this a known issue and what are the work arounds? 

[ Before anyone suggests buying a mac I just don't have that kind of money.  But happy to accept donations.. 😉 ]

TOPICS
Crash or freeze , Create PDFs , Edit and convert PDFs , General troubleshooting , Modern Acrobat , PDF , Print and prepress

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Community Expert ,
Nov 19, 2023 Nov 19, 2023

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I don't see how buying a Mac will solve this issue. The files are probably generated incorrectly by this application.

There's really not much that can be done about it, short of re-creating them from scratch. You can do that by exporting all the pages to (high quality) image files, preferably in a lossless format, such as PNG, and then create a new PDF file from those images in Acrobat.

And yes, PDF files are supposed to be portable, but if they are not created correctly they won't be...

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Participant ,
Nov 19, 2023 Nov 19, 2023

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The problem is that people aren't doing much more than save to PDF. But because their OS is using the quartz PDFcontext producer the files are corrupt.

 

Rasterising is a lot of time and effort for something that should just work.

 

One of the main reasons I'm a windows guy is for this type of thing where Apple have introduced there own way of doing a thing instead of following the common standards.  And we then have to do a lot of work because them.

 

My clients generally aren't designers or technically knowledgeable. They aren't at fault. Apple and Adobe really should get on top of this as its becoming too frequent for me. 

 

There are a few occasions where even trying to rasterise in photoshop doesn't work.

 

I am frustrated and would like a better solution as some documents can take a lot of time to turn into images. Then I have confirm the images are correct.

 

I was also interested to see if I was alone in experiencing this issue.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 20, 2023 Nov 20, 2023

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Adobe doesn't have anything to do with this issue, really.

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Participant ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Except that they write the standard and perhaps could help the developers who have implemented it poorly (?). 

It is incredibly frustrating having to turn away or do additional work due to two of worlds largest companies and one the creator of the standard unable or unwilling to help maintain the portability of the format. 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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The information on how to do it properly is publicly available. If Apple wanted I'm sure they would be able to do it right. The fault is entirely with them for not doing so.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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PS. Adobe does not write the standard for the PDF format. It's an ISO format now (32000, if you're interested).

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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quote

Except that they write the standard

One of the main reasons I'm a windows guy is for this type of thing where Apple have introduced there own way of doing a thing instead of following the common standards.

By @The_Badger

 

 

Adobe created the Portable Document Format (PDF), then gave it away to an ISO in 2007. The ISO writes the standards.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2015/06/18/who-created-pdf

 

Quartz PDFs from macOS are bad, but so are Microsoft PDFs from Windows Microsoft Office.

 

Adobe PDFs can be created on macOS when Adobe Acrobat is installed. I do it all the time — I never make Quartz PDFs on my Mac.

 

Adobe does not own PDF and they are not involved with the PDFs made from Quartz, Microsoft, and more. I know this does not solve your very real issue.

 

Jane

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Participant ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Okay.  Fine.  But the response is still unhelpful to my situation as I have no way to print these files and the more unstable the format becomes the less "portable" it is and therefore the less useful it is.

My users aren't sophisitcated. Getting something printable from them was hard enough in the first place but now the format is questionable.  So, what do we do? If we can't trust PDF anymore.


I'm back to bitmap formats and unable to help out when they do stupid things like miss bleed or put objects like text half a millimetre from the trim line.

It seems the best I can do then is just complain the expense of Acrobat Pro is not longer comparable to its usefulness.. 

I'll seek answers elsewhere.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Can you get them to send you the source files instead of the PDF? Some Adobe applications need to be Packaged first to include linked files, then zipped before sending. 

 

Your issue is with untrained users who make beginner mistakes, not with Adobe. Is it always the same people sending files or are they always different people? 

 

 

Jane

 

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Participant ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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It's different people I run a print shop, so it's the general public rather than trained professionals that encounter the issues. It's things were more than one person is contributing to a file where things become most difficult. 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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The Adobe blog @jane-e referenced above is a bit out of date.

 

In 2007, Adobe donated the PDF file format to the ISO in order to put the file format into the public domain, but with protection and development coordinated by the ISO. At that time, Adobe's engineers converted their internal working specification into what is known today as ISO 32000-1:2008 (PDF 1.7), which is the core foundation of how to create PDF files. 

 

Adobe's engineers are still involved with creating, maintaining, and developing various PDF specifications (PDF/x print, PDF/UA accessibility, PDF/A archive, etc.) and are members of the ISO committees that do this work. In fact, they head up many of those committees.

 

The PDF standards themselves are not written by the ISO committees: that task has been recently assigned to the PDF Association an international membership trade association based in Germany and at least partially funded by Adobe. Members include companies that write software that creates, processes, or uses PDF files. Membership gives these companies inside access to resources and reference materials about the PDF file format.

 

I don't see Apple is a member of the PDF.org, which says a lot about Apple's committment to meeting the standard. Remember, it did create its Preview software to compete with PDF/Acrobat, although the functionality of Preview is extremely limited.

 

So three things to take-away:

  1. Apple doesn't seem to give a rat's patootie about making compliant PDFs from their OS. PDFQuartz has always been a nightmare for print and accessibile PDFs, and I doubt it even recognizes the PDF/A and other variations of PDFs.
  2. Adobe doesn't even follow it's own standards, although it's much better than Apple.
  3. And Microsoft has improved its adherence to the PDF standards in the past few years.

 

Just my two cents' from inside ISO-land.

 

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents |
|    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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Participant ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Thank you for the response. 

 

Looks like an issue that cannot be resolved. 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Never open a PDF with Illustrator (or worse, Photoshop), it always does more harm than good.

 

Acrobat Pro has everything you need and more.
In the Preflight there are dozens of ways to analyze and/or correct PDF files.
If it's font problems, you should start here:

 

Capture_2311271545.png

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Participant ,
Nov 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023

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Thank you. That's very helpful.

I'll look into it on the next ocassion I get an issue.. won't be long... 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 28, 2023 Nov 28, 2023

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Using a script (in an Action) it is possible to detect PDFs created by MacOS PDF Services.

This would certainly be more practical than waiting for errors.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 25, 2024 Sep 25, 2024

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Hi there, not sure if you figured it out but I ran into the same issue today. What I did was save the offending PDF as postscript using Acrobat then distilling the postscript using Distiller. I used the Press setting. The PDF is now usable. Hope this is helpful if anyone else has the same issue.

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