[Scribus] compress_PDF.pl script doesnt work with transparency ?

[Tino Schwarze]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 11:59:06AM +0000, Julian Robbins wrote:

> I've been using the compress_PDF.pl script 
> http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Web_optimised_PDF to shrink Scribus 
> created PDF's to make them suitable for emailing.
> 
> However, when I came across a PDF created in Scribus with transparent 
> images (PNGs or TIFFS), saved in PDF 1.4 format, the script makes nice 
> small  PDF's still, but  the transparency in the images is removed and I 
> just get a large black areas where the transparency should be.
> 
> Is there any way to shrink the PDF's and maintain transparency? I think 
> the problem is with the pdftops function in the script.

Yes, pdftops cannot handle transparency correctly. In fact, Poscript
cannot handle it and this is used as an intermediate format.

You can try to feed the PDF directly to Ghostscript, but it's PDF
reading capabilities are limited - in my experience it couldn't cope
with the Scribus generated PDFs I tried. That's what the pdftops
conversion is good for - it transforms the PDF to something Ghostscript
handles very well.

Bye,

Tino.

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