Unflatten jpegs????

1369 views3 repliesLast post: 9/25/2006
Hey all. I was wondering if anyone had some good tips to unflattening files. I know that Illustrator can often break apart pdfs and that the Acrobat Plugin Pitstop works as well but is there anything for Photoshop? For example a client has sent me an ad that they would like to run and it is sized incorrectly. Unfortunately they sent me a flattened jpg and with text over the photo it would be difficult to recreate. Is there anything that can unflatten a jpg?

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Jeremy
#1
Is there anything that can unflatten a jpg?

no, once flattened all layer information is lost.

It is possible to recreate it by hand though
#2
My grandmother knew how to unscramble scrambled eggs too!

:)
#3
Jeremy,

JPGs are bitmap, raster files. They are one level (ie: no layers of data). The reason some PDFs can be "unflattened" by Acrobat or Illustrator is they are made up of postscript data that essentially defines a number of elements contained in the file. A PDF is simply remembering where different things are in a page layout (a picture box with raster image here... a vector logo there... some vector text here... etc).

Think of it like sheets of paper on your desk. A jpg file is a single sheet of paper. A PDF is a stack of papers.
#4