Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities not working?

[martinp7725009]

I updated to Ai CC 2018, and have been working on two pretty intricate illustrations that I've been saving as Ai-editable PDFs, as is my normal workflow. When I open them in Acrobat, I can see the layers I'd made, but weirdly, now when I try to open them in Ai, they ask to be imported, and show up as flattened PDFs, as if I'd had the "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" box unchecked, which I decidedly did not (as likely evidenced by the layers still being visible in the layers palette in Acrobat).

Is this a known bug in the new version?

[Kurt Gold]

What operating system are you using?

I cannot reproduce what you describe (latest AI version, Mac OS 10.13.3).

It could help if you were providing a sample .pdf with AI editing capabilities turned on.

[martinp7725009]

Hi! thanks for the reply.

I'm using Windows 7 Enterprise, using Ai CC 2018 (22.1).

Here is a file I saved with Illustrator Editing Capabilities definitely checked (never got a warning box about having it unchecked etc.), and there are weirdly now three pages, rather than two, one is rotated, and while I can see the layers in Acrobat, I can't in Ai

Dropbox - Garden Study_Bays 180326.pdf

I'm holding out hope that because the layers are visible in Acrobat there's some way I can recover this file so that I can get my layers and swatches back. I've been saving things as .ai since to avoid this but would love to be able to dependably save as editable PDFs

[Kurt Gold]

Thanks for the sample file. I can reproduce the issue with it.

Can you also upload the original .ai file? Then I or someone else could do a test and see what happens if the file is saved as a .pdf with AI editing capabilities turned on (on a different machine and OS).

[martinp7725009]

Unfortunately there is no original .Ai file. I'd been saving it as an editable PDF so that I could easily send it around for review, have never had this problem before because Ai usually makes it very clear that you are about to turn off editing capabilities. And I certainly wouldn't have done it for two separate files.

Is there any indication that its potentially just Ai reading it wrong? Weird that Acrobat can discern the layers but Ai can't anymore.

[MW Design]

Well, I made the mistake of grouping items when copying them over. But this is a partially recovered AI CS6 file. Artboard 2 is intact, 1 & 3 were the ones I grouped so they are smushed down to a single layer. If a reconstructed file is needed, your PDF does open properly in another application and it would only take a few minutes more.

But I think this should work for Kurt and yourself to test out the PDF with AI editable content. I don't have a current subscription, but the PDF I produced from that AI file does come back in properly in AI CS6.

***Removed file***

Mike

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I did a quick test with your file by selecting similar objects and moving them to their own layer. (Did this for about 4 layers plus the original PDF layer.) Did a save-as and it opened find on my system (Win 10; CC 2018).

From all appearances it appears to be a PDF saved without the preserve AI editing. Could the file possible have been changed to a PDF/X standard during one  of the saves? Also, it is possible that the warning dialog box got set as Don't Show Again.

[Ton Frederiks]

Acrobat "layers" are not the same as Illustrator layers, they are Optional Content Groups, which is more like a way of isolating object groups to show and hide them.

Illustrator can convert it's layers to Acrobat "layers" but they are totally different.

But your file does not seem to be saved from Illustrator, but generated from AutoCAD and that would explain your problem, there are no Illustrator layers, because they have never been there.

Look at the Document Properties:

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Good catch, Ton!

[MW Design]

Yep. I just assumed the PDF was an Illy PDF without looking at the properties. Thanks, Ton.

I do think it's about time that Illy can create layers from the OCGs regardless of what made the PDF. Every other vector editing software I use can, including the automatic release and removal of all clipping masks not necessary.

Mike

[Ton Frederiks]

That would be a good feature request, create layers from OCGs, extract Swatches from the PDF, remove not necessary clipping masks (although that may be hard to do).

Adobe Illustrator Feedback

[MW Design]

I agree in total. But other applications can remove unneeded clipping masks, so as long as we are wishing for something unlikely to happen, might as go all the way!

Mike

[Monika Gause]

The plugin Vector First Aid can remove unneeded clipping masks (and a load of other things, such as connecting paths). Although it still makes mistakes doing so.

Which other apps do that?

[MW Design]

My only experience is with Windows applications.

Both CorelDraw & Xara Designer Pro (but the other applications Xara makes can also do this) release/remove unneeded clipping masks. In the case of XDP, the drop shadows (if used in the PDF) are also released so they can easily be deleted in order to reset them (cannot remember if CD does this). Which is a good because if the PDF type has been flattened, the drop shadow contains part of the background it was on and would be an issue if changing the PDF output type.

There may still be items clipped depending upon the PDF creator and or how the original file was constructed. ID PDFs are the worst, Illy's are generally fine to open. The main takeaway is that I almost never use Illy to open PDFs as it is the worst application to do so.

However, open to edit a PDF is always a last resort for me. I'll do so under time constraints to fix an ad, poster or the like. It is not a general work habit for me. That said, there have been books where the original files have been lost and I have used XDP as a medium to edit these, with a further export to use Q for resetting it (if required).

Mike

[Monika Gause]

Thank you.

[Test Screen Name]

Yes, but as is often said ILLUSTRATOR IS NOT A PDF EDITOR. Adobe aren't likely to add features to what it isn't (they are more interested in repeating the refrain...)

[Ton Frederiks]

But as long as they don't take the feature away to open a PDF in Illustrator, they might as well improve it (as was done with the PDF import in the most recent version with the import of multi page PDF files).

[martinp7725009]

It is an Illustrator PDF. The workflow was as follows:

Original linework came from an AutoCAD plan, and I printed an 11x17 layout to PDF. Opened that PDF in Ai, then I manually separated by lineweights into layers (the layers you're seeing in Acrobat are the layers I made in Ai), and then saved as Ai-editable PDF. Worked on it like this, opened and closed a few times, and then the next day, when attempting to open in Ai, it didn't allow me to open it, it only allowed me to "import" it, and there were no Ai layers left, it had somehow lost its editable features.

I tried saving as uneditable PDF on a different file and I did get the warning, so something happened somewhere along the way, looks like there's no answer to it. I'll just have to remake the drawing. Thanks for the help everyone.

[Test Screen Name]

It would be splendid if Adobe had the will to create a full featured PDF editor. I suspect it couldn't be Illustrator though, because there are too many PDF concepts that would get broken, ugly or incomprehensible if modified to be an Illustrator thing. Still, it could be Illustrator like, rather than the twin headaches of Acrobat (not really for editing) and Illustrator (not designed to edit PDFs). Leads people to the choice of Photoshop (which is of course a disaster but people don't know and they aren't warned).