Illustrator  puts wrong MediaBox into saved PDF

bug-ID: ILL10-2002-01-11

When Illustrator 9 & 10 save artwork as PDF, the /MediaBox is set to the size of the canvas (i.e. to the full page) rather than the natural bounding-box for the artwork.

Software Versions

• Illustrator 9 and Illustrator 10 and Illustrator CS
• MacOS 9.1, MacOS X, and other platforms.

Reported by:

Ross Moore, 11 January 2002; revision and work-arounds added, 5 May 2004.

This is arguably not a bug at all, since a correct bounding-box is deducible from the /ArtBox stored in the PDF. Yet we report it as a bug, because:

• the PDF created by Save As Acrobat PDF is visibly quite different from that created by the sequence: Save As Illustrator EPS followed by Acrobat Distiller;
• it renders useless a document created using Save As PDF for importing as an image into other word-processing documents, when the importing application is unaware of the /ArtBox information, or cannot access it.

Certainly a user cannot get the desired result in the usual way for importing images, but must search for extra import options, or pre-process the image using other software (see the work-arounds below).

Example

(Click on an image to download the corresponding file.)

Illustrator  artwork	...saved as EPS...	...then `distilled' to PDF
bugtest1.ai	bugtest1.eps	bugtest1_dist5.pdf
(size = 236k)	(size = 352k)	(size = 4.8k)
	...saved as PDF (Acrobat4)	...saved as PDF (Acrobat5)
	bugtest1_ar4.pdf	bugtest1_ar5.pdf
	(size = 5.0k)	(size = 5.1k)

Note that the two ways to get a PDF file give different results.

Further Information

• For File Compatibility, the options Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3), Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4) Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) show no difference.

Suggested Fix

Either ...

When selecting Save As Acrobat PDF set the /MediaBox to be the size of the minimal rectangle surrounding the visible artwork.

Or ...

Include an option to allow the user to specify whether to set the /MediaBox to include just the visible artwork (/ArtBox) or leave it as the whole page. Use a check-box for this choice.

Work-arounds

Here are some ways to work with PDF images that exhibit this problem.

Crop the image.

With a program such as Acrobat  (Full version) or Acrobat 6 Professional, there is an option under the Document menu (check the submenus!) which allows a page to be cropped.

... for pdf-TEX:

Use coding in the document preample:

\expandafter\ifx\csname pdfoptionalwaysusepdfpagebox\endcsname\relax
   \pdfoptionalwaysusepdfpagebox 5 %
\fi

This works since pdf-TEX detects and records various boxes: /MediaBox, /CropBox, /BleedBox, /TrimBox, /ArtBox that may have been recorded in the PDF file. The /ArtBox is #5 in this list.