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Files are from: https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/vietnam/

My PDF reader can read the image but when importing it into QGIS it gives me a cyan rectangle inside a black one which I suspect is the NEATLINE bounding box.

I tried using gdal_translate to convert them in GeoTIFF

gdal_translate ban_buc-5951-4.pdf test.tif -of GTiff

resulting in no error being thrown but test.tif is of the right dimension but all white

weirdly

gdalinfo -mdd LAYERS ban_buc-5951-4.pdf

don't show any layer names

I saw a GDAL_USER_PWD, would that mean that those file could be password protected?

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7
  • 1
    I downloaded the map bac_kan-6153-2.pdf and in QGIS 3.16.11 it is displayed perfectly fine! I simply drag and dropped the file from my file browser to QGIS.
    – oekoplaner
    Sep 16, 2021 at 11:15
  • 1
    Works for me too. Converting to GTiff works too on the command line. Qgis 3.20.x - tested with a_luoi-6441-4.pdf (first on the list) and the ban_buc one as in your question...
    – Spacedman
    Sep 16, 2021 at 11:20
  • 1
    Opening in QGIS 3.20.0 on Win10 does not work for me, I just get a black frame, inside it's white. Viewing in a pdf viewer of the same file is fine, however.
    – Babel
    Sep 16, 2021 at 12:33
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    works in QGIS 3.18 but not working in 3.20 same result as @Babel
    – Mapperz ♦
    Sep 16, 2021 at 16:48
  • Seems to be a bug - you should report
    – Babel
    Sep 16, 2021 at 17:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

turns out it's a Windows related bug, after I installed gdal on wsl

sudo apt-get install gdal-bin

converting the pdf into jpg, size went from 9.2MB to 3.8MB with no loss of quality

gdal_translate ban_buc-5951-4.pdf test.jpg -of JPEG

Then the jpg opens in QGIS on windows no problem. The only little annoyance is the image appear Cyan tinted as band 1 appears unset and display a min & max value of 1.79769e+308. After setting the band 1 to red manually, all looks good.

I tried setting the band 1 to red during gdal_translate:

gdal_translate -of JPEG -ot Byte -b 1 -b 2 -b 3 \
   -colorinterp_1 red -colorinterp_2 green -colorinterp_3 blue \
   ban_buc-5951-4.pdf ban_buc-5951-4_wsl.jpg

But no luck, but oh well good enough for me

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