After some more investigation on this I discovered that the PDF no longer works the way it used to for getting the info that the certificate image display does. Something has changed because this used to work but I dont have any tests to confirm at what patch it stopped working. I do know when I first had this done the custom field in fact showed correctly in the PDF. Has there been a change in how the PDF gets this info?
On a side note since the PDF does not work like the certificate view it would be nice if I could disable this so that the PDF is not available.
Another thing I have noticed is the PDF view no longer adheres to the template layout and instead just plasters the template content across the image where ever it sees fit. Whats the point of having a template editor if the elements that use it dont use it?