Loss of text quality in Photoshop

I have a PDF that I know is 300 dpi. When you view the PDF, even at high magnification, the text on it is sharp (i.e., there is no pixelation).

I need to crop the PDF. So I opened it in Photoshop and, for reasons I cannot understand, SOME (not all) of the text on the page becomes somewhat pixelated after I open it in Photoshop.

I haven't changed the DPI or the color settings of the PDF in Photoshop.

Why does the very act of opening this doc in Photoshop cause this loss of sharpness? What am I doing wrong?

Thank you very much, in advance, for your help.

You're rasterizing the entire PDF when you open it in Photoshop. You can crop the PDF in Acrobat or you can place it in InDesign crop it there and export a new PDF.

Bob

I really appreciate your reply, Bob - I'll give it a shot

If you need to save/open photoshop pdf's back into photoshop, you need to save as layered pdf or else pshop has to rasterize any vector elements.

I see...thanks very much, Jason...makes sense

It's important to note that Jason's advice holds ONLY for PDFs created by Photoshop. All the layers in the world won't help for a PDF created in any other application.

Bob