I have recently installed Adobe Reader 8.0, and now all PDF thumbnail images have an ugly magenta background instead of white (see attached image). This used to work fine with Adobe Reader versions up to 7.08.
Jon, can you do something about it? I know it's probably Adobe's fault, but still, if there is a way to force a transparent color in shell extracted thumbnails e.g. based on the pixel in the upper left corner or something, that'd be wonderful.
Thanks in advance 
The trouble is that there's nothing I can find in the docs on the thumbnail interface (IExtractImage) that says "make hot pink transparent".
It's totally crazy for Adobe to do this. There's no reason the thumbnail they return even needs to be square. If they wanted a rectangle why not just return a rectangle, instead of a square with pink sides in the vague hope that whatever is displaying it will know that it wanted the pink to mean "transparent"?
This question recently came up awhile back in the IMatch forum, you can read the thread here:
In a nutshell this is Adobe's idea of how to improve their acrobat thumbs.
Oh, so from that thread it sounds like the pink isn't even meant to be transparent. I had assumed (without checking) that Explorer was somehow making it transparent but it sounds like Adobe just want their thumbnails to have pink borders. Weird
According to that thread the pink borders show up in Explorer as well.
Seems like it's an honest to goodness bug in Adobe Reader (it's surely not on purpose) and not anything that needs to be worked around or supported, assuming Adobe bother to fix it.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that the same company who makes the brilliant Photoshop also makes all this other junk.
[quote="nudel"]According to that thread the pink borders show up in Explorer as well.
Seems like it's an honest to goodness bug in Adobe Reader (it's surely not on purpose) and not anything that needs to be worked around or supported, assuming Adobe bother to fix it.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that the same company who makes the brilliant Photoshop also makes all this other junk. [/quote]
Yes, the ugly background is there in Windows Explorer, too. Quite strange indeed.
Well I think we'll have to wait till Adobe fixes it. (Although if it were up to me, I'd add a thumbnail hook that checks the upper left corner pixel of the bitmap obtained via IExtractImage and if it's magenta, make the color transparent throughout the bitmap. Of course it's a hack that could mess up legit thumbnails with a magenta pixel in the upper left corner, but I'd still go for it, since whoever dares to use this very color in a picture deserves it to be maimed 
)
I just filed an Adobe Product feature request telling them what I thought of their magenta thumbnails. I suggest others also take the time to do so as well. They really need to know how bad these thumbnails look.
Installing DOpus 9.0.0.8 and Adobe Reader 8.1.0 seems to have solved the issue, the magenta background is now gone. Hooray (and thanks to Greg & Jon if it was them who fixed it )
It the Adobe 8.1 that fixed it. I only Adobe 8.0 and Opus 9.0.0.8 and I still see magenta. I think enough people gave Adobe 'da bidness over that ugly thumbnail and they finally caved in.