Today, we’re going to talk about some of the features available in PDF2ID that makes it such a great tool for converting PDF and Windows XPS files to editable Extract PDF/XPS Annotations only – this is to recover just the annotations or text markups from a PDF into an open InDesign document (great for recovering all those markups).

Each of these conversion kinds allow you to further make settings that you can use to tailor your workflow.

Let go over the “Full Format” Conversion kind, which is used to convert the entire PDF to an equal InDesign file.

You’ll notice that within the Full Format conversion there are many more settings you can make.

There are “Processing Options”, “Graphics Options”, “Advanced Options” and finally “Font Substitution”.
For this demonstration lets go over the “Processing Options” as these are the ones you will use most.

The first one on the top left – Link text frames within a page. This is used to specify whether you want text frames within a page to be linked or not. PDF2ID has an intelligent text frames linking mechanism and it will link frames within a page that it considers should be connected. The frames linking also connects frames that are columnar in fashion.

The option immediately to the right – Link Text frames across pages is used to specify whether you want frames across pages to be linked. If you’re converting a PDF file that is primarily singular in column and repeats across pages, you want to set this so that text frames are linked across pages and the text from one frame to another flows as you edit across pages.

The next option we have here is “Reduce Text Frames”. This setting dictates whether PDF2ID should minimize the number of text frames created. IF this setting is off, every paragraph becomes a text frame. Having every paragraph as a separate text frame has its advantages as then the positioning of the text is even more exact but it reduces editing flexibility.
To the immediate right we have “Include Transformed Text”. This indicates whether text that is skewed, rotated or has some kind of “mathematical” transformation applied to it should be converted or not.
Following that we have Document information. PDFs sometimes contain information such as keywords, subject, author and other meta-information. PDF2ID will grab all of that data and embed them into the resulting InDesign file.
Moving forward, we have Embed PDF/XPS annotations. Text annotations/Markups are recovered and put into a separate layer in the resulting InDesign file.

Then we have “Create separate layers for text, tables and graphics”. What PDF2ID automatically creates distinct layers for text, tables and graphics — making the resulting InDesign document easier to manage and edit. The graphics resides at the bottom most layer, then tables and finally the text is placed at the topmost layer.
To the immediate right we have Group Overlapping elements. When this is set, objects that overlap such as lines, curves and images will be grouped together.

Towards the bottom we first have the Recover PDF transitions which when set converts page-transitions that exist in a PDF file to InDesign transitions.

We then have “Recover bookmarks and URLs” which will convert Bookmarks and URLs and create Bookmarks and URLs within the resulting InDesign file.

Finally we have the “Color Space” list. This list allows you to specify the colors of the text and object to use. As you can see there are 4 options. Document Color space means colors of objects are maintained in their native space. Thus, RGB remains as RGB; CMYK remains as CMYK and Lab remains as Lab. Selecting any of the other color spaces will force all colors to that specific color space.
As you can see the list of options is quite comprehensive.
Now, lets convert a file and observe how some of these settings have an effect on the resulting file.
The file we are converting only takes a few seconds to convert. If we observe the converted file and remember the options that we just went through,

We observe that “Frames are linked”. “Frames have been reduced” ; otherwise each paragraph ends up being a separate frame. Its also recovered the annotation that was in the original PDF file – and you notice how its made a separate layer for it. Furthermore, you notice in the Layers panel that Text and Graphics are in separate layers; easing the editing process and if we look at Interactive/Bookmarks panel we notice how these elements have been properly recovered and applied.

Its important to realize that PDF2ID converts the text, graphics and images; and it also creates high level property associations, ensuring that the structure of the InDesign file is well organized and easy to work with and it also recovers all other data that is part of the PDF.

PDF2ID provides you a variety of options allowing you to fine-tune the PDF to INDesign conversions while providing you with complete control over the entire process. For more information please visit Recosoft Corporation at www.recosoft.com