Export for Production (Etchable PDF) for UV process

I have been using the PDF output to produce my PCB’s.

Recently I have change to using UV film PCB board. The output of the Etchable PDF needs to be inverted to use this process.

The track lines need to be transparent and the background needs to be black for the images to be printed on transparency film.

Is it possible to add a feature to the Etchable PDF export that produces PDF for the UV process printed on transparency film?

the track lines, pads, etc are transparent
the background is black

Thanks for the Help Robert

While I’m not at all familiar with any of the etchables, a work around that should work is to use export as svg instead and then with a text editor edit the svg file and alter all the #00000 (black) fields to #555555 (grey to preserve current black) then change #ffffff (white/transparent) to #000000 (black) and finally change #555555 to #ffffff (preserved black to white/ transparent). It is possible there is a way to do this in Inkscape but I think this may be simpler. If you know how the colors are represented in the pdf file the same trick should work there, but I deal mostly with svg files not pdf (other than to read them :slight_smile: )

Peter

In addition to editing the XML, as @vanepp indicated…

Most drawing/graphics programs have ability to change colors via doing things like Invert, Replace, Filter…etc.

Inkscape has several ways of doing it (see Filter>Color>Invert and Other selection/filter tools

Simple Drawing programs like Paint, PaintBrush have selectable color changing…

OpenOffice uses the panel called Color Replacer… Also has a Paint bucket…

Etc, etc… all require some learning but, are simple enough.

NOTE: The file Type does matter - resolution of SVG, PNG, JPG differ…

Below is an example using Boxy…

The process is:
•Export SVG (from Fritzing) only the Copper Fill, Traces…).
•Open the SVG (or other).
•Drag the Group of items out of the way.
•Create a Rectangle and Fill it with Black.
•Select the Group of items and change the Color of the Stroke to White.
•Drag it back to original position and set it ‘Bring to Front’

Done Now you can save/export…

If you want, you can describe this exact use case (and why other export options are not an option) , and submit a feature request at github. It could be made as a simple select field in the pdf export dialog. If the feature is of greater interest (more people asking for it, or even pull requests from community) I would implement/add it.