mark-uped / annotated PDF to Illustrator

[suawek]

Is there a way to open PDF in Illustrator with all mark-ups/annotations/edits done inside PDF?

Meaning I have a file from the client with several annotations done in PDF, and I don't want to re-draw them but only update in Illustrator objects my client put on top of that PDF.

Is there a scripty for that? I cannot find anything on that topic anywhere...

[Monika Gause]

That is not possible. You could use "Share for review" instead of a PDF workflow.

InDesign has this kind of PDF workflow. But can only read comments in PDFs you have created from InDesign.

[suawek]

Well, I should spend more time experimenting.

Note: Bare in mind, this "technic" is ONLY for vector anotations made in/on PDF - NOT for text changes.

So it is actually POSSIBLE. This is how I did it:

1. Open PDF with comments/annotations

2. Go to Comment tab (on right)

3. Click three dots at the top of the tab (see attached image)

4. Choose "Print with comment summary"

5. Choose "Print to PDF".
6. Open Illustrator, open exported/printed PDF - select "All" or "Page range" - you need to deselect "Import PDF pages as links for optimal performance"

7. Voilà

The flipside is that it will:

- print on a random page size (A4). If you eager, you can play around and - possibly - set up page correctly tho.
- it imports "bubble" comments as vector icons (see attached image)

- it places "comment numbers" next to the thing placed in PDF.

- it takes time to do step 5 if it's complicated file (i.e. technical drawings)

Above way helped me big time.
All I needed after I opened commentedon/annotated PDF is to clean the file slightly and - in my case - scale it x 2, as originally it was A3.

Pro tip.

If you have tons of pages, copy only these pages you want (to be opened in Illustrator) to another PDF and continue from step 2. Don't export all of the pages. It might/will crash your machine, or it will take ages to finish exportiung it.

In my case, I had 13 turbo-complicated PDF'ed technical drawings and my machine got so hot I could fry an egg on it.