composite images import black or garbled

[fashionable_artist157F]

Sorry if this is answered already. I dug around in the forum and could not find it but seem to remember having a solution some time ago.  I'm using TCS 4.0 (FM 11 / RH 10) although this problem is not specific to that combo.

In FM, I have images with text callouts and graphic objects, in addition to a screenshot.  For the life of me, I cannot recall why *sometimes* these appear in RH as a black image. It seems to occur if I even add just an empty text box to an anchored frame with art. In some cases, the text boxes appear to be converted to garbage, the graphic objects come through, and the screenshot is black. The same shot (see below) is broken when I have either the graphics or the text box. I remove both and it renders properly. I'd prefer not to embed these items in the art as the printed result is better when the text is in FM.

I've tried:

• setting width/height to 0 (fixed quality of standard art, awesome tip)
• ensured nothing touches edges of anchored frame (no change)
• changing text callout to be "source" instead of mapped (no impact)
• art with graphic objects alone (still goes black)
• art with text alone (still goes black)
• anchored frame with text alone (get wee garbly box)

Conversion settings:

Here is the FM source:

Here is the result mapped into RH (Linked by ref)

Finally, and i hope this is not the solution:

I did a test using a vector text element instead of a text box and that mapped just fine. I hate using these though as they litter the anchored frame with little graphics turd boxes whenever I forget that it's not a normal text box and press the enter key for a new line.  I also prefer to reflow my captions as I adjust the art, and vector text doesn't behave that way.

I am convinced that I have had this working before -- what am i forgetting?

Message was edited by: starrd added a note about vector text

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I've not seen your problem in my work, but also don't use FM text lines and boxes with my screenshots.

Have you tried pasting the screenshot into Illustrator and adding text callouts there? I believe you'll have better luck with one composite image than with a series of objects in your FM anchored frame.

-Matt

[fashionable_artist157F]

Thanks Matt:

I know that compositing the images outside of FM will solve it. It just seems

that the functionality to use the text boxes is present in FM and should work,

and in fact I think has worked in the past. I'm missing something...

[fashionable_artist157F]

UPDATE:

I found an old project in which these features worked and did the following experiment which now proves that I need Adobe engineering or Forum expert gods need to help me sort thru the options to get this working.

1. Created new project file
2. Imported settings file
3. Changed Image conversion properties to below (unchecked all boxes at top and changed scale to 100, default to png - this matched previous project which only had the do not regenerate checkbox in RH9)
4. Imported (linked) same book file as above
5. Generated project
6. Artwork appears with normal (albeit blurryish) screenshots, graphic leaders, and text boxes as desired
7. Modify a caption in the text box of the art being tested
8. Force update (just the chapter)
9. Artwork is not refreshed.
10. Modify conversion settings to set flag to allow distiller to regenerate the artwork
11. Force update (just the chapter)
12. The artwork breaks as indicated in my original posting.

Here are RH 9 image settiings that I tried to emulate:

Here are settings for above sequence in RH10 prior to enabling the regenerate checkbox:

The problem then appears to be that the conversion works with whatever algorithm RH uses to initially generate the artwork but the only means to subsequently regenerate it uses a different algorithm. Is it possible that one path uses <algorithm A> and the other path uses Distiller? Can't these both be the same path?

Augh. Bug?

[fashionable_artist157F]

UPDATE 2:

I reviewed a few more posts and had some interesting results, but still am hoping Mayank Agrawal will weigh in on this because the results are inconsistent.

Based on his article here: http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2011/06/troubleshooting-framemaker-content-conversion-in-robohelp-%E...

I changed the PDF options in my FrameMaker source for the book to be High Quality and enabled the distiller options in the Project Settings for Images.  No change in results.

I changed my settings to convert all images to jpg (most of my source are png), that seemed to work. The images were converting properly altho text boxes disappeared.

During this testing, I found that modifications I was making in the FM source were not getting picked up in RH despite doing a Force Update/Force Update All. I have seen this happen quite a lot, so exited both apps and restarted. Magically...everything now seems to work properly.

I then revisited an old project to test the theory...Project Settings for Image conversion had it set to PNG. Did a force update all to get a clean copy of content before changing the JPG setting...and the images all came thru fine as in the other project. 

Now I have no idea whether JPG is necessary, whether the PDF setting in FM is used by the non-Distiller algorithm and that somehow made a difference, or whether all these conversion failures were due to a memory management problem that cleared up when I exited and restarted the two apps. 

It's quite frustrating to not have a reproduceable, clean workflow for basic functionality.  I *think* things are working and believe I can spend a day or two again if things break to tickle them back into working but I can't swear that I know what fixed it. It would be nice to have Dev jump in and explain.