Copying Graphics out of FrameMaker

[Guest]

We are converting some FM7 files to FM9 Structured and have some supplied Frame files that have had about a third of the graphics copied into Frame as OLE2 facets instead of imported by reference and we no longer have any of the original files that were copied in.

A simple copy and paste of the graphic seems to only capture the low-resolution screen image and the resulting graphic prints with the low resolution “Jaggies”. The same graphics print fine from the Frame document, so it has a high resolution image in there somewhere.

Is there any way to easily copy the high resolution images out so that we can import by reference to the new Frame documents?

Thanks

Chris

[Van Kurtz]

Chris,

Unless someone else can come with a method to get the image out of a FrameMaker document directly, you can try this.

Make a PDF of the file. I would print the file to the Adobe PDF printer AND turn off PDF Data AND print to file. Then using Distiller distill the Postscript file BUT BE SURE to edit the job options in Distiller turn OFF any downsampling or image compression, turn OFF any color management, and turn off anything else that might affect the resulting PDF. Basically, you do not want Distiller altering any images in the file.

IF the graphic you want to retrieve is a bitmap image, then open the PDF in Acrobat (not Reader) and export the images as tiff (Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images). You do not have to select tiff as the export option; but the tiff format is lossless. I would avoid jpeg because it is a lossy format.

IF the graphic is a drawing, then you can open the PDF directly with Illustrator and copy/paste the graphic into a new Illustrator file.

IF you have no application that can edit PDFs, such as Illustrator, then using Acrobat Pro (or maybe Standard will work, not sure), open the PDF, extract the page with the graphic, and try to delete everything that is NOT part of the graphic. Save the result as a PDF file or an EPS file.

The above is what I have done in the past. I believe it keeps the graphic as much in its original quality as possible.

Van

[Art_Campbell1]

The method you're using is only capturing teh screen image, not the source graphic....

You can, of course, do it manually. But Rick Quatro at Frameexpert.com has a script that should to this. I use it all the time for copyied in graphics that are actually graphics, not OLE objects, but I suspect the script would either work or Rick could tweak it.

He also has a couple of companion scripts that reimport the saved graphics as referenced graphics....

Art

[Van Kurtz]

Art,

You say:

You can, of course, do it manually.

How does one do it manually? Occasionally, I come across a legacy document that uses copied graphics. It would be nice to know how to extract it without scripts, etc.

Van

[NL_Derek-56V59O]

We have had success by opening the PDF with CorelDraw. Corel seems to understand the internals of the PDF and creates a vector graphic which we then save as EPS and re-import by reference.

It may work with other vector drawing packages, I have not tried it.

Occasionally Corel cannot handle the PDF (produces an empty image). In that case I print the PDF as a PS using Acrobat and Print to File; then I distil the PS and get a PDF which looks the same but Corel can get inside it.

Hope this helps,

--- Derek

[Art_Campbell1]

OK, we may need to clarify terminology here....

An OLE object, by definition, is linked to the original file. If the file isn't there, the OLE link won't work.

So all you need to do to convert it to a referenced graphic is to delete the original object (noting the path first), and then import by reference.

If the graphic file is actually copied into the FM file, then it's not an OLE. To fix this, you could take the PDF route, use Rick Quatro's script, or generate an HTML, which should spin off the graphics as separate files. I'm not positive the HTML route will work using Frame's internal filter, but I think it works with MIF2Go -- but I haven't tested it because I habitually use imported-by-reference rather than copied in.

Cheers,

Art

[SQUIDDS]

Test the feature "Export copied Images" coming from SQUIDDS TOOLBOX.
There is also a feature to reference automatically the exported images as referenced file again.

- Georg