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Participant
November 12, 2022
Question

PDF changing upon opening in Photoshop!

  • November 12, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 4054 views

I had the weirdest thing happen and I don't know why this is going on. I have a PDF file that I opened in Photoshop, but the file changes! The fonts, the images! BUT, if I open the file in native PDF OR Illustrator, it remains the same. Any idea what is going on here? It almost cost me a BIG mistake in a project. I didn't realize this at the time because I've always opened a PDF in photoshop without any issue. Is there a setting or something causing this? Thank you in advance.

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3 replies

Participant
November 14, 2022

Thank you everyone! Yes, looks like the client edited the original psd in their PDF. Thank you for all the insight!

Abambo
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2022

To be clear: The PDF is showing the correct version?

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer
Legend
November 13, 2022

It's well known that Illustrator ignores edits to a PDF, because the PDF also contains the original Illustrator file. It's much less well known (indeed, I didn't know) that Photoshop does the same; this PDF has the original PSD embedded in it, and this is what Photoshop will prefer to open. That way you get back all layers and other things.   This can be turned off by turning off the option "Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities" when saving the PDF. No such option on open. This is really quite an unusual workflow, which is why I think this problem (or valuable feature, depending on your point of view) is little known.

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2022

Yes, this is very unusual. The original PSD file is saved in a PieceInfo dictionary, which is probably what PS is accessing when loading it (since working with a PSD file is much easier for it than working with a PDF file), so the changes that were made to the PDF after it was created are not present in that version.

This is yet another reason why editing the static contents of a PDF file is a bad idea...

Legend
November 12, 2022

Unusual. Please describe changes in detail, or share PDF if possible. 

Participant
November 12, 2022

Here's a screen grab. The PDF on the left and PSD on the right. On further inspection, it appears that the file is reverting to a previous version! The logo on the top left tipped me off when it first happened! You can see it's not only a font change but a text change too! Both of the files are downloaded on my computer, so it's not grabbing from the cloud or anything. You can see the text changes and images. It's very strange!

Bernd Alheit
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 12, 2022

Can you share the PDF file?