Hi Tom,
If you generate a custom appearance there is no way for PDFNet to regenerate that appearance (e.g. when annotation is scalled), since it does not know how you build the appearance.
At the same time since you customization seems to be small (just a color change) you may be able to chage the default appearance by changing the “DA” (Default Appearance) string in annotation dictionary for FreeText annotation:
annot.GetSDFObj().PutString(“DA”, "/Arial 12 Tf 0 0 1 rg ");
For more info plase see:
https://community.apryse.com/t/setting-custom-attributes-on-form-fields-e-g-font-point-size-stroke-color-etc/639
Please note that although this article talks about form fields, the same applies to FreeText annotation since it also supports DA entry (Table 174 in ISO 32000 PDF spec).