How to get color Info from PDF

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   Hi 
I'm can't find any color info function in library? 
May be there some other tricks?
I'm need the info about additional colors (Pantone or other nonstandart) found in PDF file.
(same as displayed in Print_production->Output_preview command in Acro7)
Thanks

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Harier Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 08 Dec 05 Location: Afghanistan Status: Offline Points: 6	Post Options Post Reply Quote Harier Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: How to get color Info from PDF Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 2:27AM
	Hi I'm can't find any color info function in library? May be there some other tricks? I'm need the info about additional colors (Pantone or other nonstandart) found in PDF file. (same as displayed in Print_production->Output_preview command in Acro7) Thanks

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3524	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 3:19AM
	Hi! I had the same problems i think... I wanna know if rgb, cmyk or grey was used. I do LoadFromFile, Encrypt and read all into a string. In this string i search for "RGB", "CMYK" and "GREY". If you wanna make some experiences have a look in these string content... you'll see many interesting things for your own functions ;-)
	Cheers, Ingo

Harier Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 08 Dec 05 Location: Afghanistan Status: Offline Points: 6	Post Options Post Reply Quote Harier Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 4:32AM
	I can't understand how do you read all into a string??

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3524	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 5:30AM
	Hi! I haven't access to my sources now. I'll post some code here this evening.
	Cheers, Ingo

chicks Members Profile Find Members Posts Debenu Quick PDF Library Expert Joined: 29 Oct 05 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 251	Post Options Post Reply Quote chicks Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 12:33PM
	Harier, I wrote a color extraction library that extracts all CMYK spot and process colors from a PDF. It doesn't use QuickPDF, just opens the PDF and parses all objects looking for colorspaces and separations. It uses the open-source zlib.dll to uncompress any streams it comes across (only handles Flate encoding, so I use pdftk to decompress any PDFs that use other encodings first). It then parses the decompressed streams using regex for color definition patterns, such as: 0 0 0 0 K 0.3 0 0.4 1 k etc. It really isn't too difficult to do it yourself if you download the PDF spec and have a bit of regex knowledge. My lib is for a prepress color separation tool I'm building for a printing company, so it only deals with CMYK values, not RGB. Also, it has a built-in Pantone to CMYK table, which you can download from Pantone.com. I can't share my code, but (hint, hint) you can get a REALLY good introduction to PDF parsing with this code: http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/pdfview.asp

Michel_K17 Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie www.exp-systems.com Joined: 25 Jan 03 Status: Offline Points: 297	Post Options Post Reply Quote Michel_K17 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 2:40PM
	Hi Chicks! Thanks for the "hint" Personnally, I had been using a PDF Editor called "NitroPDF Pro" to be able to look at a picture and get info about the colorspace. That program is not bad, but has a quirky user interface and for being a little bit slow. I give it a 3.5 stars out of 5. It costs $99 and is available at www.nitropdf.com

chicks Members Profile Find Members Posts Debenu Quick PDF Library Expert Joined: 29 Oct 05 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 251	Post Options Post Reply Quote chicks Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 3:16PM
	Yep, I'm very familiar with NitroPDF. They use the Zeon PDF lib. I installed their beta the day it came out, but their forms interface was VERY slow at that time. Probably better now. BTW, they don't publish an API, but it's very simple to get the interface and write to it

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3524	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 5:55PM
	Harier, here's my code for extracting the complete file into a string (Delphi) ... . . . textkomplett := ''; fs := TFileStream.Create(Edit1.Text,fmOpenRead+fmShareDenyWrite); try SetLength(textkomplett,fs.Size); fs.Read(PChar(textkomplett)^,fs.Size); finally fs.Free; end; . . . Later you can use things like this: . . . If Pos('/Device', textkomplett) > 0 Then begin fschema.Text := System.Copy(textkomplett, Pos('/Device', textkomplett) + 7, 4); fschema.Text := Trim(fschema.text); end else fschema.Text := 'Nothing'; . . . Behind "Device" there's the colour model... Good luck! Ingo
	Cheers, Ingo

chicks Members Profile Find Members Posts Debenu Quick PDF Library Expert Joined: 29 Oct 05 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 251	Post Options Post Reply Quote chicks Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Dec 05 at 11:26PM
	Harier, I put together a commandline .exe using my lib. It only does DeviceCMYK process and spot separation colors, but if it extracts what you want, maybe I can create a DLL for you. It will ignore any RGB or any colors in images. Sorry, can't provide source code. http://www.geocities.com/sea_sbs/files/pdfcolors.zip Edited by chicks

Harier Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 08 Dec 05 Location: Afghanistan Status: Offline Points: 6	Post Options Post Reply Quote Harier Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 20 Dec 05 at 3:49AM
	Thank You Chicks I'm trying the pdfcolors it works. But I'm need in for some more simple task. To do the list of nonstandart additional or "spot" colors for information only. So I'm no need in percent or objects info with some colors. After looking on PDF file content (through text viewer) I'm discover that my info is after word "Separation". But in some files this info is omit(or encrypted) So some research is needed. Your program is very interesting because it can determine what real colors are in file. But sometime it describe color as (unknown) what it mean? Thank's

chicks Members Profile Find Members Posts Debenu Quick PDF Library Expert Joined: 29 Oct 05 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 251	Post Options Post Reply Quote chicks Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 20 Dec 05 at 12:37PM
	Harier, The program is meant primarily to discover a set of predefined colors and Pantone colors, so has internal tables with cmyk values for about 800 process colors, and all 1089 Pantone colors. Any cymk values not matching the internal tables return as (unknown), which simply means no "friendly" name for the cmyk values is known to the program. I have thought about moving the color tables to an xml file or SQLite database so that they can be maintained without coding and recompiling. Do you have any interest in such an app?