PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

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GeorgeBell
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PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by GeorgeBell »

Flare 2017 r3. Windows 10 - fully up to date.
We've been using Flare almost since it was released. (A feature we especially like is Flare's ability to produce an Index in PDFs where the page numbers are links.)

Our project contains many screen shots of dialogs. For those we use SnagIt and save as *.jpg files.

We've recently had to update a number of dialogs, all of which have a 1 pt border, and find that while all's well when viewing the Topics, once compiled into a pdf, the bottom border of any NEW image is missing. This is NOT a border we have added in Flare.

However, when compiling to Word, the bottom borders are there!

Now here's the rub!!! Adding a 1 pt bottom border in Flare of a color matching the other three sides, is at least a work-around. BUT - when compiled to Word, there is now a TWO pt bottom border.

Any thoughts anyone - pleeezzze?

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trent the thief
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by trent the thief »

Hi George,

So the existing images are okay? Are you adding the borders using Snaggit?
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GeorgeBell
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by GeorgeBell »

Hi Trent,

I've not been able to pin down exactly what the issue is here. And unfortunately not the time either.

Virtually all of the dialogs in the application have a blue border, hence I use the feature of SnagIt which let's me easily capture them.

I suspected initially in was an upgrade to SnagIt 2018. I had needed to update quite a number of dialogs, and it was when I complied to PDF that I first noticed the missing bottom border on the refreshed screen shots. The originals were OK, but at that point, I had only reviewed on screen. In my haste I assumed it was a SnagIt issue and merrily added a 1 pt matching blue border to 50 or so shots. Problem solved - or so I thought.

But when I produced a hard copy, the border of those new shots was clearly 2 pt.

Back to Adobe Reader DC's screen, and I found that when I zoomed in, the bottom border did eventually reappear.

At this point, I also had a case going (on another thread here) where random entire pages would be blank - but only when viewed in MS Edge. That turned out to be solvable in Flare and was caused by using a Font Family called "Arial Unicode MS", but it did drop my confidence. (On a side note, only yesterday, some 2 months after reporting the problem here, someone else experienced the same blank page issue.)

I had to get the Project completed, so worked around the issues, not really knowing which software to blame, and just a gut feeling it was Flare's PDF compiler.

I'd be interested in knowing of anyone else has spotted this?

George
trent the thief
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by trent the thief »

I'm glad you found a way around it. But 20 years of snaggit problems whenever it had to be used leads to point at snaggit ;-)

My personal capture tool choice is HyperSnap. I use GIMP for adding borders. It's a simple process that I automated with a GIMP macro. I'm not a fan of borders, preferring the old FrameMaker hack/method of sticking an image into a bordered cell of two cell table and dropping the caption in the other cell without a border.

It's something to poke at. Have you looked at that image output in a word doc and word's PDF output? Or a PDF from Distiller?
Trent.

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umm...
I meant MAD Certified.

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ChoccieMuffin
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

I have a problem with images being fuzzy and unclear if I've resized them to anything other than 100%. And it's kind of understandable really, because if a line is only 1 pixel wide, how is it supposed to decide what to do with that 1 pixel when the image is reduced in size? Like you I've found the images look fine when you print the PDF or when you zoom in, but it's really annoying that they look rubbish when viewing the PDF at 100%.

And no, I don't have any suggestions for how to solve the problem, other than making sure you don't resize your images. (But for me that's just not possible so I have to live with fuzziness.)
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GeorgeBell
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by GeorgeBell »

Is it not practical to work in Points "pt"?
ChoccieMuffin
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

GeorgeBell wrote:Is it not practical to work in Points "pt"?
Not when working with images, which are just a collection of pixels. If you take a screenshot of something that's 1 pixel wide and then make it, say, 50%, then Flare/Acrobat don't know how to scale down something that's as small as it's supposed to go.
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nhhale
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by nhhale »

I'm having a similar problem with Flare 2017r3, Windows 10, all updates. But in my case, the bottom row of pixels in an image that doesn't have a border added in SnagIt appears to be lost in the PDF--until I zoom up to displaying the PDF at 200%. As these images did pass through SnagIt on their way to becoming SVGs, I'll try an experiment to see if that's where the problem is coming from. I'll post my results.
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nhhale
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by nhhale »

In my case, the problem does appear to be related to something added to the image by SnagIt that survives into the SVG.

Problem method: Use SnagIt to capture or edit some PNGs from PowerPoint slides; once the image content is trimmed and set appropriately, use Inkscape to convert to SVG and scale. Even with 10px of padding added to the image in Flare, the bottom row of pixels is not visible in the generated PDF unless I zoom to 200%.

Better: Save slide as PNG, open with Inkscape to do all editing, convert to SVG. I still need the 10px padding at the bottom of the image, added in Flare, because if I omit it, the same problem occurs. However, with the padding, the bottom row of pixels always shows in the PDF, without needing to zoom to 200%.

This used not to be the case, with the exact same styles in play...
Nancy Hutson Hale
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SalesPage Technologies
http://www.salespage.com
Certified MAD for Flare
GeorgeBell
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Re: PDF - Images - missing bottom borders

Post by GeorgeBell »

What are you viewing the PDF in? In our case, post Windows 10 Fall update, we found Flare's View Result was now defaulting to MS Edge.

Have you opened the same file in Adobe Acrobat Reader itself?

Do you see the same issue when you print the document?

I have just repeated the test again. Viewed in Edge, I needed to zoom to 150% to even begin to see the bottom borders, and they only appeared correctly at 200%

But if I view in Acrobat Reader DC, all is well at 100%.
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