Acrobat plugin to get separated colorvalues

Question

Hello Everyone,
I try to "develop" a plugin that get the colorvalues of the current mouseposition and compare these values with colorvalues in a text file.
If the values are equal the name of the predefined color in the text-file will be shown in a message box.
I am sorry that this sounds quite simple but I am very new to the sdk. I try the samples, but I cannot find a Funktion/Method to get the CMYK or separated colorvalues of the current mouseposition in the document. I think that is possible, because of the "separation preview" in Acrobat.
1. Can anyone give me some hints about getting the separated colorvalues and spot colors?
2. Is it possible to extend the functionality of the "separation preview"?
Thanks for help.
Steve

Answer 1

Hi nkpmnwn,
I tried to render the given data as a bitmap, but that fails for me.
I solved my problem by the getting the PDEImage Data (raw data) from the PDF document and read out the first "pixel". I did this only for CMYK colorspaces.
Here is my code to print out the cmyk colorvalues from a PDEImage (Sometimes it is very slow):
    ASFixedRect bboxP;
    PDEElementGetBBox (pdeElement,&bboxP);
    // convert/cast  PDEElement to PDEImage
    PDEImage pdeImage = (PDEImage) pdeElement;
    //defining buffer size
    ASInt32 len = PDEImageGetDataLen(pdeImage);
    //create buffer
    ASUns8* data = (ASUns8*)ASmalloc(sizeof(ASUns8)*len);
    ASUns32* encodedLen;
    ASBool isEncoded = PDEImageDataIsEncoded(pdeImage, encodedLen);
    //Get the Colorspace of the image
    PDEColorSpace pdeColorSpace = PDEImageGetColorSpace(pdeImage);
    ASAtom colorSpaceName = PDEColorSpaceGetName(pdeColorSpace);
    const char* cs = ASAtomGetString(colorSpaceName);
    char c[200];
    sprintf(c,"Colorspace: %s Numberr %d", cs, colorSpaceName);
    // show the values in Acrobat
    // AVAlertNote(c);
    // write raw data to var - maybe very slow but it works for me
    PDEImageGetData (pdeImage,0,data);
    // init vars for cyan, magenta yellow and black
    int cyan,magenta,yellow,black;
// just for CMYK
if (colorSpaceName == ASAtomFromString("DeviceCMYK")){
        // read out the first pixel from raw data dump
        // looks really simple
        cyan = data[0];
        magenta = data[1];
        yellow = data[2];
        black = data[3];
        // I cannot remember why I did this????  Perhaps it is more accurate
        char colors[200];
        sprintf(colors,"Cyan: %2d Magenta: %2d Yellow: %2d Black: %2d", cyan, magenta, yellow, black);
        AVAlertNote(colors);
        // cast the int color values to float
        float c = (float)cyan;
        float m = (float)magenta;
        float y = (float)yellow;
        float k = (float)black;
        // getting the % CMYK values to compare it with photoshop values
        char colors2[200];
        sprintf(colors2,"Cyan: %f Magenta: %f Yellow: %f Black: %f", c/2.55, m/2.55, y/2.55, k/2.55);
        AVAlertNote(colors2);
sorry for my c programming style and syntax and my english too. :-)
I hope this helps?!