[pdftex] includepdf includegraphics

[Tim Arnold]

> I have a vage recollection that some images with transparencies or
> some alpha-channel settings could have side effects. But I thought
> that the problem no longer exists with a current pdftex.
> --
> Ulrike Fischer

Just adding my experience to Ulrike's. I found that adding a PNG with a transparency channel had the same effect the OP is seeing--seemingly bolded or jittered-bold text on the entire page.  My fix was to remove the transparency channel and everything looked fine and printed fine.
As Ulrike says, it's a situation that is supposed to be fixed in the latest pdftex.

There was a thread on the issue from earlier this year on comp.text.tex.

--Tim Arnold