low-quality copy (to the clipboard) in Keynote and Pages

I think, I found a workaround.

1. Copy and paste the graphic / picture into TextEdit.

2. from there drag and drop the picture into Keynote (copy and paste does not work!).

Same here. I cannot understand. This is an extremely important feature, but no reply from helpdesk. I believe we should ask it again and again...

Thanks so much for starting this thread – I am working on a new iMac and just launched Keynote for the first time under Yosemite; quite frustrating, as I've used Keynote to produce graphics (nothing is better at creating elegant charts or tables) and copy-paste them into InDesign projects for output to PDF.

I did send some feedback "up the chain" to Apple; I hope they respond.

In the mean time I have found a "fix": copy-paste into Pages, then re-copy and past into InDesign. This seems to yield the correct result - a vector version of the graphic without a superfluous black background (which is what I've been experiencing). Will help me meet my deadline, but I really need Apple to remove that extra step pronto...

I did send some feedback "up the chain" to Apple; I hope they respond.

Apple occasionally ask for more information about an issue if they have not heard about an issue before. This is a well publicised issue and Apple are well aware users are having problems. They will not reply to individual issues and will not enter into discussions with end users.

I am on El Capitan and images still paste with low quality. I have been using Keynote for the last 5 or 6 years but now I am switching back to PowerPoint.

Same problem here. I did a bit of testing, here a few findings:

1. The problem started with Yosemite.

2. If you have multiple user accounts, the problem is the same for all users.

3. Not only Pages and Keynote are affected: third-party apps such as Swift Publisher 4, Autodesk Graphic (formerly iDraw), Notability, LibreOffice and probably many more apps show the same problem.

4. Not all apps have the problem: Nisus Writer Pro pastes high quality (vector), Scrivener too, Pages '09 (older version, part of iWork), Keynote '09 (older version, part of iWork) work fine. It seems to me that older apps that are not "made for Yosemite" work fine. Best example: Version 3 of Swift Publisher pastes vector, Version 4 (optimised for Yosemite) pastes blurred bitmap… I contacted the developer, but he wasn't able to reproduce the problem on his machine.

5. I use a MacBookPro, mid 2010.

6. For Yosemite, there is a simple workaround: use the open-source Skim.app instead of Preview.app, and you have vector high-quality as before.

7. I updated to El Capitan: the same problem, and even worse: Skim pastes only white boxes (so this alternative is not working anymore).

8. I then did a clean install of El Capitan, with a new user, no apps (apart from pages): the problem was gone, Preview copies high quality vector graphics, and you can paste them into pages. Hooray!

9. Oops, my hooray came too early. After "a while" (I don't know what or if I changed anything), the blurred bitmaps are back again :-/

10. Found new workaround: make your selection in Preview.app, and then click on "Crop". Save this PDF snipped and then drag the file's icon into Keynote, Pages, Swift Publisher or whatever you use. You will get vector high quality graphics…

Anyway, at least I can work now with the crop-drag-drop-workaround. However, this is ridiculously cumbersome of course. I wonder what happened between my clean install of El Capitan (when vector pasting worked) and now (blurred images again). Probably there must be one file or app or some thing that disturbs PDF copy/paste, as Preview would be actually capable of copying the right way. I guess that file sits somewhere not in the user folders, as it affects all users. Any ideas?

I'm not understanding number 10 as, when you copy from Keynote to even Preview, what you get is a bitmap, not a PDF.

The initial issue as I see it (and that you confirm in number 4) is that the workflow described below USED to work and provided a high quality vector PDF for Preview and other apps that can convert the PDF to vectors:

1. Create a shape in Keynote

2. Copy

3. Paste into the other app OR use "New from Clipboard" in Preview

With the latest Keynote and OS, step three yields a PNG image. One with the proper Alpha Channel, but still just a relatively low resolution image. Can you describe your step 10 workaround in more detail?

Kyn Drake, I am terribly sorry, I misread the topic!!! I was writing about copying a PDF-vector-snipped FROM Preview.app TO Keynote/Pages – that get's bitmapped as well… Anyway, when I do it the other way around like this thread suggests (from Keynote to Preview), I experience the same as you: bitmapped low quality… Since it is the same problem in both directions, I guess those problems are connected. I'll do further research on that – it's frustrating that after my clean install of El Capitan it worked for a while and I don't know what caused the problem again. If I find some time I'll do a clean install again to check…

Interesting. I landed on this thread as I was demonstrating to a colleague the copy & paste feature from Sketch into Keynote (and the other way round). For me on my Mac vectors are retained going back and forth. For him however, it copies & pastes to a bitmap. We're both using the same versions of both software & OS.

I vaguely remember a setting in Finder where you can choose how images are copied to the clipboard and I'm pretty sure PDF is one of the options. But that could be a dream I had and I'm mistaken.

Either way, it does work (my computer is evidence) but I don't know why it's inconsistent across Macs.

Ideas?

When you say "same version", what specific versions of Keynote and OSX are you using between the two devices? Also, after copying from Sketch to Keynote, could you share that file using Keynote/iCloud? Might be interesting to see what exactly got placed in the file.

Sketch 3.4.2 & Keynote 6.5.3.

Here's a link to a file with the imported object (it's imported as a PDF): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1312569/Star.key?dl

Dom

"pasted-image" is exactly what I'd expect. It's almost as if, on affected computers, a "defaults write" command for pasteboard settings has been given that sets the pasteboard to PNG output instead of PDF. And are you running the latest OS or some older OS?

For either of the two computers experiencing different results, what's the iCloud status? I was pondering if this would make a difference. Maybe there's some systemwide setting that says "If using iCloud, then prefer PNG" or something like that. I kinda wish there was a way to just "peek" to see what's on the pasteboard, like a pasteboard dump. Being able to see the formats it's capturing plus their priority could help to determine why PNG is always getting highest priority on some computers.

Another thing I haven't tried (because I didn't know if it would provide any useful information), is to do a copy from Keynote, go to Preview, do Command-N, then check the logs to see if there's a difference. Now that I know there's at least ONE system out there consistently not having the problem, there's got to be some logical way to bring an affected computer to that state.

You know of Finder>Edit>Show Clipboard ? However, this always says TIFF image, even if I use a unaffected computer that actually does copy as PDF (vector).

I did a bit of testing: I have installed OS X El Capitan onto an external drive and used it with a blank user (and no iCloud authorisation). No problems with copy/paste, it works resolution-independent, no pixellated bitmaps, everything perfect. However, when I copied my user-folder onto the external drive and set my old user-account as administrator, the problem came back, and for all other user accounts as well. Very strange. I guess I'll have to do a clean install of OS X, make a new user account and copy my data folder by folder… 😟

I have tried just to sign out of iCloud and restart my machine, but that didn't help…