Desaturation on flattening

[MJN]

I've searched the forums without any definite answers to the following:

I've often wondered why the colours get really desaturated when one flattens the pdf-comments and save?
Is there a way to prevent this?

Cheers,
MJN

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Myself, I can not immediately reproduce the problem in PDF-XChange Editor V6, build 322.7

Can you please post a PDF example file with comments before flattening and the same PDF after flattening the comments ?

[MJN]

Hello Willy,

Attached are two pdf's before and after flattening. I now use build 317.1 but used the latest build until very recently (I downgraded intentionally!) with the same desaturation results upon flattening. Build 322 has it's own share of problems, so I'm not gonna upgrade before a newer build is released, hopefully addressing those bugs...

Cheers,
MJN

[Willy Van Nuffel]

I can not reproduce the problem - see attached PDF with flattened comments.

Maybe something to do with the Color Management?
(Via Edit > Preferences...) - attached my own settings (default ?).

[MJN]

When I open your version of my pdf it is still desaturated, and my Color Management settings are the same, except for the RGB settings where mine says:
'Monitor RGB - Dell U3514W Color Profile,D6500'.
It has the option of switching to the same setting as yours but it yielded the same results... no dice then...

[Willy Van Nuffel]

I must apologize. It is only when the file has been saved and closed, and then reopened, that you see the difference.

After a little examination, it seems like (in PDF-XChange Editor) the "opacity" for base-content-objects is handled differently from comments-objects.

You can clearly see this via the attached PDF. I have set the opacity for both objects to 80%.
Open it with PDF-XChange Editor and then open it with Adobe Reader DC.

Must be a bug in the Editor ?

[MJN]

I'm thinking it's a bug too. But I'm still viewing this as change in saturation, not opacity, seeing as the objects have the same 'see through'-quality before and after... I don't know whether that would be important in handling this bug?
Sometimes clients have called because they can't tell the difference between some of the colors due to the flattening, so I'm more careful in selecting hues with enough initial difference.

I'm looking forward to seeing if this has a fix in a future build

[Willy Van Nuffel]

I agree, the visible difference is rather in the color and saturation.

I was focusing on the opacity, because when you set this to 100% for both objects, they are visible the same.

It is only when the percentage of opacity is being set to a lower value that you are beginning to see the difference.
Right click on an object in the attached PDF (in Edit Comments mode / in Edit Content mode), then click Properties...

To repeat: at my opinion the PDF is correctly written, because it shows correctly in Adobe Reader DC.
It is the Editor that renders it differently.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi All,

Thanks a lot for the comments and sample files in this topic!
I can confirm that I observe the same behaviour, so I have asked my colleagues in the dev team to take a look at this, and if the bug is confirmed - I will make a ticket to get this resolved!

Regards,
Stefan

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Please set Default transparency blending color space option to "Device RGB" and you will have the same result as in Actobat (they do have this option set as default).

This option can be found in Editor's Preferences (Edit -> Preferences or File -> Preferences in ribbon UI; or Ctrl+K) on "Page Display" tab when you click "Rendering..." button.

HTH

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Sorry to say Ivan, but changing the "Default transparency blending color space" from "Auto" to "Working RGB"
in PDF-XChange Editor V6 build 322.7 does not change anything.

The problem is still there.

I hope you can agree while verifying this problem at your side (with build 322.7).
Maybe this problem is not there anymore in the coming V7 ?

Best regards.

[MJN]

Having been swamped with work I haven't had time to check back on this issue as of late -glad to see ongoing discussions!

Due to an unrelated Editor issue, I recently decided to 'downgrade' the Editor to the, IMHO, better V6, Build 317.1 and it had the unexpected sideeffect of not being prone to the desaturation at all as far as I can tell...

Regards,

MJN

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Good news for MJN that the problem was not yet there in build 317.1


In the most recent build 323.1, even though, and if my eyes are not cheating me, I see that the problem is still there.

[MJN]

Thanks for the reply Willy!

Any idea if this issue has been fixed in V7?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello all,

I am afraid that there seems to be some differences in the rendering indeed!
Do you have custom icc profiles for your monitors? If so - can you try to remove those temporarily, and see if the issue is still present?

Regards,
Stefan