Issues with Acrobat Pro PDFs and opening in Photoshop

[Fancypantsrodgers]

Hi everyone! I'm having a really frustrating situation with Acrobat and Photoshop. I have individual PDF files which I created in Acrobat Pro, which all have bleed and crop marks. Some of these files open fine in Photoshop and show the bleed and crop marks, but some of them open at their cropped size. Even if I make the canvas bigger, the crop marks and bleed are not present. I am using Acrobat Pro 2023.006.20360 and Photoshop 25.0. Does anyone have any tips at all?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi @Fancypantsrodgers when you open a PDF in Photoshop, there are options you need to confirm before opening.

One of them is the "Crop To" option. Depending on what is set it will show crop marks or just the live area of the PDF.

[Fancypantsrodgers]

Hi Kevin, thanks so much for your response! The issue with these particular files is that when I open, Photoshop doesn't ask me to confirm the size. With the files that are opening fine and showing bleed and crop marks, Photoshop does ask me. I'm opening the files all the same way, by dragging the PDF into the Photoshop icon. I have also tried right-clicking the files and selecting "open with" Photoshop, but I get the same result. I feel like there must be a really simple solution, but I've tried everything I can think of.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

The only way a PDF would open directly in Photoshop without going through the import window is if it was created/modified and saved from Photoshop. Were all these created the same way?

[Fancypantsrodgers]

Hi Kevin, 

All of the files were originally created in Photoshop, and then saved as PDFs with crop marks and bleed. I used Pitstop Pro (an Enfocus software) to automatically generate the bleed as a mirror of the images and have then been opening them in Photoshop to touch up the bleed - hope that makes sense? All of the images were created in exactly the same way.

Thanks again for trying to help me with this!

Jen

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi @Fancypantsrodgers the X factor in this is PSP - I'm familiar with it from back in the print production days. Do the ones that open directly have the bleed or not?

[Fancypantsrodgers]

Hi Kevin,

All of the files have crop marks and bleed when opened in Acrobat Pro and Acrobat Reader. Most of the files are showing the bleed and crop marks in Photoshop, but some are just showing the image at the cropped size, and not prompting me to select a crop size before opening. All created exactly the same way.

The ones that are opening directly and not prompting me to select a crop size do not show the crop marks and bleed in Photoshop.

Hope that makes sense?

Jen

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi Jen,

Yes that makes sense. Are you certain PitStop was run/saved on the PDFs that are not showing the crop marks and bleeds?

[Fancypantsrodgers]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, I definitely used Pitstop Pro on all of the PDFs as that is the programme that generated the bleeds for me.

Jen

[Dylan31358750uith]

I’m having the same problem.

I have a PDF test file at 3.5" x 2" 300 dpi (business card size), but  the size would vary depending on what I am doing. 

I am adding a .125" bleed in Acrobat using Print Production > Preflight Edit Fixup  > Generate Bleed From Page Content > Mirror Edges and Corners

This has been successful and when I go to file > properties in Acrobat the new size is 3.75 x 2.25, as it should be and the bleeds are visible in Acrobat.

When I then open this new file in Photoshop it is still 3.5 x 2 with no bleeds. Adjusting the canvas or image size does not help.
Any advice would be appreciated.