Text and Image Highlights Behaving Differently

[PercyGarris]

Grateful for any help!

So, I'm on a Mac - newest OS etc, new machine etc and using up to date Adobe


I made a document in Pages that contained: 


1. Text typed in Pages


2. Screenshots of a second document (a PDF)

I exported this document as a PDF and opened it in Adobe.

I used Adobe to highlight (in the default pastel colors of yellow purple blue )etc:

i. Parts of the Text

ii. Lines of text in the imported screenshots

I then saved it, and that is my finished PDF.

It looks great in Adobe but I have the following issues:

1. When I open in Word or Google Docs, the stuff highlighted in the screenshots retains the correct pastel shade. But the highlighted text becomes universally bright yellow bc those programs think the highlight there represents a 'Note'.

2. When I open in Mac Preview, the stuff highlighted in the screenshots retains the correct pastel shade. But the highlighted text all becomes primary color versions of the pastels.

So it appears like the program handles/saves/exports highlights on text and highlights on images differently?

Does anybody know a solution so I can preserve the correct color highlighitng in the text too? 

Many thanks.

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Hi, @PercyGarris, the solution is for you and anyone accessing this document to recommend that they use Acrobat Pro or Acrobat (free) Reader and not Word or Preview. 

The reason for this is fairly straightforward. Acrobat is one of the very few applications that strictly adhere to the Acrobat ISO standards. Not all do. 

Now, one thing you might try is when you create your PDF from Pages are you creating the PDF by clicking on the PDF link in the Print dialog (red arrow), or selecting "Save as PDF…" in the dropdown, or the bottom option: "Save as Adobe PDF." Note: the "Save as Adobe PDF" is only available to you if you have Acrobat Pro, not Adobe/Acrobat Reader.

The first two options create a PDF from Apple's (or Windows) PDF generation code. The results from this will be different than the code from Save as Adobe PDF as that means the processing is done by Acrobat, not Apple or Windows or…. If anything might solve this and remove the problem, that's it. 

Please let us know if this solves your problem.

 

[PercyGarris]

Hi Gary-
Thank you - that's very helpful and much appreciated - I will try that.

In the interim i found something of a workaround but it is super labor intensive so I wouldn't recommend it and think your approach is better.
Workaround is that it was specifically the text highlighted as text via cursor (rather than the text in images, highlighted with freehand tool) which was doing odd things.  I removed this highlighting and instead 'highlighted' it by overlaying a rectangle of the desired highlight color (and 12% opacity.). This seems to be preserved in preview etc, but was a lot of work even on my relatively short document.
My thanks again!