Comment 12 for bug 817049

The problem appears to be caused by pdftops writing tiling pattern images as Type 3 fonts. I am assuming this was done to support level 1 PS. The PLRM section 4.9 (Patterns) states "The ability to paint with patterns is a feature of LanguageLevels 2 (tiling patterns) and 3 (shading patterns). With some effort, it is possible to achieve a limited form of tiling patterns in LanguageLevel 1 by defining them as character glyphs in a special font and painting them repeatedly with the show operator". But section 5.7 (Type 3 fonts) states: "Normally, it is unnecessary and undesirable to initialize the current color parameter, because show is defined to paint glyphs with the current color.". The PDF specification also contains the same text.

The best solution would be to fix pdftops to use patterns for level 2 or higher output.