[Tex/LaTex] pdftex: Embedded pdf graphics not printed or partially printed

adobegraphicspdftex

My problem concerns PDF not being portable across platforms.

I use these apps:
* MacOSX 10.6.8.
* Texshop 2.47, right out of the box, nothing customized. Default command is LaTeX. Default script is pdftex.
* Adobe Illustrator CS5.

I am writing a long book. Some of the graphics are bitmap images (e.g. TIFFs), that are imported to Adobe Illustrator using "Place." Then I add labels to the Illustrator document, save as EPS, and convert to PDF with Acrobat Distiller X 10.1.3. The bitmap images are not placed as links; they are actually in the Illustrator EPS document. Finally the LaTeX document includes the PDF via \includgraphics and graphicx.

It works perfectly — for me. The problems are that

  • My friends print the document, e.g. from Mac LionOS or from Windows, and these figures are sometimes blank (other, simpler figures print fine).

  • My other friends view the document on iPad, and the same figures are again blank.

You can find one of the bad figures here:

Illustrator EPS version:

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/~pcn/BadFigs/g113pereiraABClabel.eps

PDF version created by Acrobat Distiller:

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/~pcn/BadFigs/g113pereiraABClabel.pdf

When this was embedded in my LaTeX document, processed by pdftex, and then printed from Mac Preview in OSX 10.7.?, two of the three bitmaps were blank. One bitmap was printed, along with the labels added in Illustrator.

It's hard to know where to begin here, so any general advice is welcomed. Thanks.

Best Answer

Something seems to have gone wrong with the export to eps. According to Encapsulated Postscript files, the first line should just be a version comment such as

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0

but in both of your files there is some trash preceding this. Open the files in a text editor and delete the trash. There is also a very large amount of trash at the end of your files. Everything that follows

%%EOF

can (and should) be deleted. If this doesn't fix the problem, I suggest eliminating Adobe Illustrator from your workflow. It is the work of Satan. You could convert the bitmaps to jpg or png format, include them directly in your LaTeX file, and use the picture environment to add labels as in this answer. This method has the advantage that the font used for the labels will automatically be the same as the font used in the rest of your document.

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