PDF bounding box problem?

[cormullion <cormullion@mac.com>]

I’m trying to place a PDF created by Adobe Illustrator 10 using \externalfigure. But it’s coming in with loads of white space around it.

Although I’m new to ConTeXt, this reminds me of the old problem where there are different types of ‘box’ specified in the PDF file: one possibly specifying a paper size, others specifying perhaps the extent of the marks described within. The PDF file contains these ‘box’ lines:

> /MediaBox [ 0.5 -0.5 612.5 791.5 ] 
> /ArtBox [ 206.97998 316.0459 402.12988 477.66016 ] 
> %%BoundingBox: 206 316 403 478
> %%HiResBoundingBox: 206.98 316.0459 402.1299 477.6602
> %AI3_TemplateBox: 306.5 395.5 306.5 395.5
> %AI3_TileBox: 30 35 582 761
> %%BoundingBox: 206 316 403 478
> %%HiResBoundingBox: 206.98 316.0459 402.1299 477.6602
> %%BoundingBox: 206 316 403 478
> %%HiResBoundingBox: 206.98 316.0459 402.1299 477.6602
> %AI3_TemplateBox: 306.5 395.5 306.5 395.5
> %AI3_TileBox: 30 35 582 761
> /FontBBox [ -167 -250 1006 939 ] 
> /FontBBox [ -222 -250 1006 922 ] 

To my untutored eye it looks like the MediaBox is being used - at least, the graphic takes up  an area about Letter size.  Is there some setting I’ve missed that lets me get the bounds of the graphics rather than the file?

thanks!