PDF's lookact differently in GS and other programs than Adobe apps 421

John-Paul Stewart

No no, speculation is good! For example SaGS speculation above about the CropBox fixed half the problem. The speculation about using pdftk (while I've only been able to play with it on my own PC and as yet unable to install it on the server) has yielded some additional info, and the speculation about the PDF versions has increased my knowledge a little bit... so speculation is great. =)

Unfortunately it's not flipping, but rotating. What it is, is it's generally only happening on the "back" image of a two-sided product (business card, post card, etc.) The front and back images are two different files, not two pages of the same file.

Evidently someone will design the back, and then flip it upside down so that when it's laid out on the "flat" for printing, it's in the right orientation.

However, in this thumbnail creation process, it's SUPPOSED to stay upside down, but GS is flipping it back right-side-up. So when you open it in any Adobe product it displays upside-down which is correct, but GS and other PDF readers are shoing it in the originally designed right-side up. If it was happening to ALL back side PDFs I could set it up so that GS flipped the image before it then ran montage. But it's not always happening. =

I'm hoping to be able to get this pdftk installed on the server, and see if outputting the metadata I can find a common link, like a particular application or version or something I can rely on to determine GS flipping or not.

Anyway, thanks for the replies! -Liam