PDF exporting of Writer 6.1.0 blurs embedded PDF images

It seems that the embedded PDF images are converted to JPEG by Writer 6.1.0. 6.0.6 works fine. My OS is Windows 10.

Update 1: After some investigation, I guess it’s the way v6.1.0 saves a .odt file that contains PDF images.

  1. Create a document in Writer, insert a PDF into it, and save it as “saved_by_6.1.0.odt”.
  2. Try to export it to PDF. This hangs Writer on my machine.
  3. Open “saved_by_6.1.0.odt” with v6.0.6 on another machine, and save it as “resaved_by_6.0.6.odt”.
  4. Try to export it to PDF. This works flawlessly with both v6.0.6 and v6.1.0.

Hope this can help track down the bug. I really like the fresh new look of v6.1.0.

Update 2: Turns out that v6.1.1 has fixed this problem.

  • If the document contains a v1.4 PDF image, the generated PDF is perfect. Since v6.0.6 works all OK, I think this is a regression in the code of down-converting v1.5+ PDF to v1.4 using pdfium.
  • If the document contains a v1.5 PDF image, the generated PDF is corrupted (Acrobat saying: Critical parser failure: Extended graphic state resource missing).
  • If the document contains a v1.5 PDF image and we export it to PDF with reference XObjects enabled, the generated PDF is valid but with a blurred (raster) image. I think this is another regression.

Changing the PDF version is boring, but at least a way out. :slight_smile:

Updated 3: Filed a bug report here: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119880

While the use of PDF files as images is getting better, it’s still suboptimal. I recommend you to convert the PDF file into SVG before using it. You can use Inkscape for that (in Linux you also have pdf2svg, but I don’t know if it’s available on Windows).

The PDF export obeys the settings accessible using FileExport AsExport as PDF..., where you can decide how to export images (General tab).