[pdftex] background color changes from MiKTeX version 2.7 to 2.9

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2012-11-22 at 20:08:40 +0100, Peter Zimmermann wrote:

 > Dear pdftex experts,
 > 
 > when pdftexing the file
 > 
 > \documentclass{article}
 > \usepackage{color,graphicx}
 > %% \pdfminorversion=3
 > \begin{document}
 > \pagecolor{blue}
 > \null
 > \pagebreak
 > \includegraphics{pict.png}
 > \end{document} 
 > 
 > with a multicolor picture pict.png the background color changes
 > when running the same file on a (Windows XP) machine with MiKTeX
 > 2.7 and MiKTeX 2.9. This is visible with Adobe Acrobat/Reader
 > (version >= 7.0), not with SumatraPDF.  In the 2.9 version the blue
 > background looked shaded on page 2 (not so with 2.7).  I have
 > verified that all loaded files have the same version except:
 > pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.8-beta-20080627 (MiKTeX 2.7) versus
 > pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (MiKTeX 2.9)
 > 
 > and 
 > LaTeX2e <2005/12/01> (2.7) versus LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> (2.9) 
 > 
 > The picture is a screenshot clip from a vignetting chart of a
 > zoom-objective (reproduceable with other clips; clip from page
 > http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests//242-nikkor-af-s-18-200mm-f35-56-g-if-ed-vr-ii-dx-review--test-report?start=1 ).

(I removed the line break from the link.  Hopefully the my mail client
doesn't insert one again.)

 > If I use \pdfminorversion=3 with 2.9 the problem is gone (from
 > \pdfminorversion=4 on the problem occurs). What has changed in
 > pdftex and why?

It's curious that only Adobe Reader has these problems.  However, I
can't reproduce it with TeX Live and AR-9.5.1 on Linux.  I tested it
with

  pdfTeX 3.141592-1.40.3-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.6)    %% TeX Live 2007
  pdfTeX 3.1415926-1.40.9-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.7)   %% TeX Live 2008
  pdfTeX 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012)

and with \pdfminorversion=3 and the default.

I had a similar problem with colors.  Whenever a page contained a
graphic with transparency (produced by pgf/pgfplots), the colors in
our company logo changed.  The solution was to add the line

 \pdfpageattr {/Group << /S /Transparency /I true /CS /DeviceRGB>>}

to the top of the LaTeX source file.  You don't use transparency
explicitly, but it's supported by the PNG standard at least.

You could also try to insert a JPEG file instead, AFAIK JPEG doesn't
support transparency.

If this doesn't help, please make your PDF files accessible.  If you
don't have access to a web server, send me the files privately and
I'll put them on mine and provide a link.

BTW, your test file is already quite minimal, but you can still reduce
the size (and the number of objects) of the PDF file if you add the
line

  \pagestyle{empty}

to the preamble.  This prevents pdftex from putting any fonts,
encoding vectors, and related things into the output file.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
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