Mark McDonald
Mark McDonald

Reputation: 41

Convert PDF with transparency into EPS without rasterization

I want to convert a PDF page that contains one or more transparencies into an EPS. This EPS would be used as an image in a PostScript file which would eventually be converted back into a PDF.

The output needs to stay vector based and not be rasterized.

The PostScript file is created by a custom C# application which is automated on a server so use of Adobe Acrobat is not allowed.

I understand that native PostScript/EPS does not contain full transparency functionality, but I believe that PostScript which includes the extended Ghostscript transparency operators or pdfmark should fix this:

Ideally I would like to use Ghostscript to convert the PDF to an EPS that contains the extended Ghostscript transparency operators, then I could just include it in my PostScript file and convert the PostScript file to PDF using Ghostscript again.

Unfortunately the ps2write and eps2write devices always force the entire page to be rasterized when a transparency is encountered.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1000

Answers (1)

KenS
KenS

Reputation: 31199

The Ghostscript extended PostScript operators for handling transparency in PostScript are not universal, and so the (e)ps2write device does not use them.

There is absolutely no way whatever (using Ghostscript) to create a PostScript file with transparency operations which is not rendered.

I don't know of any application which can do so using pdfmarks either.

Upvotes: 3

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