My problem goes even a step further. The "white box" (or black) appears on a white background as well for me. The logo is actually segmented by several faint black lines - almost horizontal quarters. If you zoom in at almost 300% the lines disappear - but they also show when you print the document.
I swear - I have tried everything!! I'm about to buy different software to fix this problem as the company logo is crucial to every document we print to PDF. Is this really what Adobe wants?
can you post a sample pdf so we can see what you're talking about?
Sure! Here's a BIG example of my problem. I think we're just going to buy seperate software to print to PDF, but I would appreciate a solution to this problem if anyone knows one!
See example here:
<http://www.rha.org/example.pdf>
My boxes are black (not white). They appear around logos or any other type of graphic that I pasted into MS Word 2003, then printed to Acrobat Distiller 5.0. The boxes appear only when viewing with Acrobat Reader 6.0. They don't appear when viewing with Acrobat 5.0. They do not print when printing from Reader 6.0. Like Katie said, if I zoom Reader to 300% or more, the box lines disappear. My platform is XP. So, somebody please decide if it's a problem with Acrobat, or Reader 6, or XP, or perhaps MSWord. While you're at it, give us all a solution. I'm stumped.
Hi All,
I've experienced the same problem with the 'stitching' that is occuring and can offer a few ideas that may help.
The problem of 'stitching' occurs most commonly when there are overlapping or transparent objects on a page that are converted to pdf. Depending upon the program you are using (I use InDesign), the artwork may need to first be flattened. I think this is the case with the Rental Housing Logo. It looks like it should be flattened in Photoshop or Illustrator before exporting to pdf.
<http://mjfontec.yourwebhost.com/exampleflattened.pdf>
Just a few words on the concept. If you export the document to acrobat version 4 (pdf 1.3) the artwork is flattened automatically - and in many cases, this solves the problem (not always though). If you export the document to acrobat version 5 or 6, the transparency or overlapping is still considered 'live.' The stitching occurs when acrobat tries to flatten the artwork and is determining if it should flatten it as vector art or as raster art. Acrobat is actually slicing or 'clipping' the overlapping areas as it flattens it. You can find tutorials on Adobe by doing a search for flatten transparency.
Both InDesign and Illustrator allow you to choose the 'transparency flattener' options. However, I don't think Microsoft Word will. In Acrobat 6 there is an option to view the transparency flattener settings under 'Advanced>Transparency Flattener Preview'.
Hope that helps, e-mail me if you would like me to explain further.
Thanks,
Mike
Flattening of tranparent artwork will always happen when printing to postscript/pdf. Applications such as Indesign and Illustrator will give you control over this process unlike word xp and 2003.
Word XP and 2003 o treat images differently internally and when printing to postscript. At least as far as the black borders problem goes. The white lines might be something different altogether.
Stick to Word 2k I'd say.
Katie,
I opened your pdf in Illustrator and saw that it was broken into several vector paths (the black part and some masks over the white parts) and images (the white part). I'm curious about the resolution of the original bitmap image (your logo). I tried using one of the sample files that ships with Acrobat (on the CD \Customer Support\Test Files), and didn't have the problem of the image breaking up. The sample images are 300-dpi TIFFs.
You might also try changing your image to greyscale, or change it to a different file format (is it a TIFF, or a BMP now?). I believe I've seen in the forums that this happens with 1-bit images in AutoCAD as well.
Hope that helps,
Kay
I have this problem too. Patsy Klein says it best, "For the record, my settings for everything are ALWAYS the default; for exporting, importing, saving, printing, etc."
The problem for me has been occurring for well over 6 months, having upgraded from Acro5Pro to Acro6Pro very early. It manifests itself as a thin black line around any images in a Word document. I'm using Word 2002 SP-2 on a WinXP machine with Acro6Pro.
Some notes from my investigations, to no avail at finding a solution, include:
1. Opening the PDF in Photoshop shows that the document has a transparent background, images have a white background (matching the thin black line).
2. Using the Picture Toolbar in Word to pick a transparent color in the image might work save the fact that the conversion to PDF enters molasses mode and consumes 99% of the CPU, failing to produce anything.
3. My black lines are viewable in the Reader and print as well.
This is a problem of significant magnitude that Adobe should investigate immediately, find a workaround, or develop a fix.
Tim
Since seeing this thread this morning, I thought I would revisit my investigation from several months ago.
I opened my letterhead scan, 600dpi bitmap (.bmp). Believing that it has something to do with the transparent background of the Word document and the lack of transparency support in BMP graphics, I opened my letterhead BMP, switched modes to grayscale at a scaling of 1. Using the wand tool I selected the white background with a tolerance of 1 and contiguous unchecked. I then deleted the white background and saved the new image as an EPS with the defaults.
This seems to have solved the problem as it has manifested for me.
I must admit that I don't know what the benefits or consequences of using EPS may be, I just know that EPS is supported in Word.
EPS is prob the best file format as it is self contained, if it were. meaning that Word doesn't change it when creating a ps files (which is what happens when using the pdfmaker.)
It will also result in smalelr pdf files, although the original word file might end up larger.