[PLUG-TALK] redact document without rasterizing the whole dang thing?

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 00:55 Brian Scrivner <captainplanet at hevanet.com>
wrote:

>
> > Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2020 17:07:10 -0700
> > From: Tomas Kuchta <tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com>
> > To: Off-topic and potentially flammable discussion
> >       <plug-talk at pdxlinux.org>
> > Subject: Re: [PLUG-TALK] redact document without rasterizing the whole
> >       dang    thing?
> >
> > Why's not just opening the PDF in libreoffice or inkscape, deleting the
> > text and exporting it as PDF?
>
>
> Thanks! I don't know how I overlooked that. When I tried editing and
> found that "Save as..." didn't allow saving as a PDF, I must have moved
> on and then reading I-lost-track-of-how-many articles this was not
> mentioned. It does work, when the info I want to remove is in a text
> format in a PDF.
> _______________________________
>

If the PDF/text to be redacted is an image you will have to select+delete
or block the text image by a rectangle of suitable background.

Inkscape, Gimp or libreoffice-draw should be able to do that and
collapse/re-render the graphics  without the the deleted/obstructed text
image. Note - Gimp will likely render the output pdf as simple image
without the text.

Of course, scanned PDFs can have both image and text (OCR) - and if they do
- the text box is often below the image as to preserve the original look.

It makes sense to verify that the unwanted text and image are truly gone
from the output file and not simply hidden in another layer below the
original. Once you establish verified workflow - it becomes simple routine.

Tomas

>