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I've made quite a few images in Illustrator that have gone into LaTeX documents before with no problem, but now I'm having an issue with a graphic that has some gradients in it.

I've tried exporting it from Illustrator as a pdf with almost every combination of settings I can think of and they all seem to have issues. To demonstrate, here are some screen shots of just one small part of the graphic:

In Illustrator (what it should look like):

enter image description here

Exported as pdf/x-3 and viewed in Preview (weird boxes showing up, looks the same in LaTeX):

enter image description here

Exported as pdf/x-4, in Preview (looks good!):

enter image description here

That very same pdf/x-4, in my LaTeX document (probably worst of all of them!):

enter image description here

So, there is obviously some strange stuff going on with those boxes showing up and gradients disappearing and whatever else is happening in the last example, but I can't figure out what the issue is.

I know it sounds like I'm complainting about an Illustrator issue, but there are plenty of versions I export which look totally fine in Preview and other programs, but when I run them through LaTeX, they look all screwed up.

Any ideas on this? The graphic is in RGB so I am guessing it may have something to do with going to CMYK, but I don't know how to do that while still having it look good. BTW I am on a Mac, using TeXShop.

Mensch
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thkemp
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    I think in order to test the issue, users need the pdf generated by illustrator. If it is possible, also upload the pdf or at lease the problematic portion of the file. – Pouya Feb 14 '13 at 19:07
  • TeX makes no changes to images when they are included. However, different PDF viewers handle anti-aliasing differently. This is most likely the cause of the effect you are seeing. – Joseph Wright Feb 14 '13 at 20:05
  • Please try exporting as PDF 1.3 and 1.4++. – Martin Schröder Feb 14 '13 at 20:18
  • @Pouya Here is a pdf generated by Illustrator using PDF/X-4:2008 and PDF 1.7 compatibility. Here is that same pdf displayed in a TeX document. The result is not quite as mangled, but clearly the gradients are different. Not a disaster, but if the point of TeX is to have complete control over appearance, then that objective is not being met in my case. – thkemp Feb 14 '13 at 23:56
  • @JosephWright Maybe I'm missing the point of what you're saying, but clearly there is a difference between the appearance of the two files I've linked to above when opened in the same PDF viewer, right? The only difference is that the 2nd one has be processed using TeX, so it seems like that processing must have changed something. – thkemp Feb 14 '13 at 23:59
  • @MartinSchröder Exporting in PDF 1.3 compatibility produces the effect with boxes (see original post), regardless of which PDF/X-? standard is used (and independent of the TeX issue, that shows up immediately upon export). Exporting in PDF 1.4+ (all the way up to 1.7) looks fine before TeX, but results in messed up graphics after TeX (see final image of original post). Also, it is not just apparent in the PDF preview of TeXShop, this graphic remains messed up in the final PDF output from TeX, when viewed in any other viewer I've tried. – thkemp Feb 15 '13 at 00:08
  • Update: I will add that the original pdf coming out of Illustrator looks the same in both Apple's Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader. However, the output from TeXShop looks different in Preview compared to Acrobat. – thkemp Feb 15 '13 at 00:13
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    LaTeX and Acrobat used together have serious issues with transparency of any kind. In general, transparency should be omitted. Basically, the problem is the same one as described here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/141/why-are-some-pages-in-my-pdf-coming-out-bold – yo' Mar 02 '13 at 21:19

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