Photoshop - missing layers while saving as pdf?

Question

I have problems saving my photoshop file as a pdf or eps vector graphic. It wont include some of the layers and I cant see why. See screenshot below:

screenshot: psd (left), pdf (right)

I tried out photoshop cs5 and cs6, both wont work on the file. example: psd and pdf file (zip)

Can anyone tell me whats wrong with my psd file? I have other similar graphics where the export to pdf works as desired.

thanks for any hints.

update1: blending mode is normal, there are no differences between the layers which are displayed and the layers which are hidden.

i tried multiple pdf-readers (adobe reader, document viewer, texworks viewer), this shouldn't be the problem. in addition, opening the pdf in illustrator gives the same result.

update2: rasterizing the layers is a workaround, but I need vectorized output, that's why I save it to pdf/eps...

update3: as i'm in hurry and i need this for my bachelorthesis i used the "dirty" workaround mentioned by Martie and rasterized the layers. the result is OK for my needs.

still, it would like to find out how this happened to avoid such hassle in future.

Answer 1

Echt interessant.

When I went and created a duplicate of the green shape that does show up in the output it worked just fine. For some reason just the cells don't show up.

If you have to do this in Photoshop then I could create one big background shape and draw black rectangles as the stroke.

But I would really recommend to remake this in Illustrator, you shouldn't run into as many issues. It shouldn't take too much work.

Answer 2

You can try 2 things.

1. Raterize, and flatten all your layers, and then save it as a pdf.

2. Download bullzip pdf printer from here http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php instal the program, and see if it works like that

As for the pdf printer. You instal it, print your document, and at the printer settings you select bullzip PDF printer.

Hope this works.

Update:

Sorry no luck with the settings for me.

Now I've been thinking to do this in another way. I don't know if you are familiar with smart object, but it basically is merging layers into one layer, but always being able to access those layers later.

To do this you do the following.

You select either all your layers, or select your vector layers. Then right click on one of the selected layers, and choose convert to smart object. This will put all those layers in one smart object layer (not 100% sure if it stays vector though).

Then when you double click on the smart object, it will open up a new window, where you can see all the layers inside that object, and edit them, also changing them in your original document.

Then try exporting it as a PDF again, and hope for the best.

Hope this does the trick for you :)

Answer 3

Since Export Layers to Files is run by some script all I had to do was find that script, then find the function which saves the layers to files, find which part of the function does the numbering prefix.....

Answer 4

The reason that behaviour takes place is that you have constructed your layer shapes in the wrong way or you copied and pasted from another program like Illustrator and something went wrong with the shapes in that process.

I opened your file and discovered you have paths on your shape layers that are useless, they just sit on top of your shapes (on the same shape layer). I have deleted some of those paths to demonstrate my theory and here you go: problem fixed. You will see that some layers still have problems but some are appearing now (because I fixed those).

Click to download fixed files

Answer 5

File -> Save as -> Format : Photoshop PDF ; remove the tick mark next to "Layers" -> Save