flatten everything

[sietracky]

Hi,
I think there is an option to flatten a document in a way that it is saved as picture with non editable text and coments and so on.
Can't find it,
thank you, horst

[Willy Van Nuffel]

The most easy way to do this, is to open the PDF in PDF-XChange Editor and then File > Print...

In the Print dialog box:
- make sure to select a PDF-printer (like "PDF-XChange Lite" or "PDF-XChange Standard) as the destination printer
- at Advanced Print Options - Print, select "Documents and Markups" (or even "Whole Content")
- mark the check box at "Print as Image"

Click the Print button.

The resulting PDF will just contain the image(s) of your original file, no more editable text.


An other way is to use File > Export > Export to Image(s).

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Thanks Willy, We would only suggest that as a Last resort,
I would first recommend Flattening the comments with the Flatten comments tool, under Review:

and then Using the Export as image tool,(under Convert) to ensure everything is rendered as an image and not able to be affected without an OCR process.
We Rarely recommend Exporting a PDF to PDF as this can eventually lead to document corruption.

[sietracky]

So no simple one click way
I exported the pages as single jpg and imported to XChange Editor again.

... Exporting a PDF to PDF ...

Something like that would be the most elegant way, name it: flatten everything and save as embedded picture.
...
I know that I can't avoid of grabbing content from the document, but the copy paste way is way to simple.
horst

[Willy Van Nuffel]

And so, what is wrong with my "solution of the last resort" ?

Did you try "print as image" to a new PDF ?

It is only the file size that will grow significantly.

[Timur Born]

If you only want the whole document to become flat images that remain searchable then you can use the OCR function and have it create a new searchable document. This will turn all pages into images while adding a searchable invisible text layer underneath.

Of course the OCR process will take some time, depending on the size of your document. Use Medium accuracy, which can be faster than Low or High.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Thanks once again Willy!

Cheers,
Stefan

[sietracky]

And so, what is wrong with my "solution of the last resort" ?

Nothing !
As I had already installed a pdf printer that I had used in the past I had not installed the XChange printer ...
till now ... I think I have to change.
horst

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

[Timur Born]

It's worth noting that printing (as image) can take considerably longer compared to using the OCR function. That is because printing only seems to use a single CPU core even for large and complex documents. OCR uses anything between one and all cores (16 threads on my system) to process the pages, plus it adds a searchable layer.

Would be good if Editor could introduce multi-threading for printing in the future.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Timur,

Thanks for the suggestion - however I am not sure if that cna be done for printing - as preparing and sending the print job to the printer would usually be limited by the device (even if a virtual printer), and not the speed at which the Editor can send things to it. Also - multi threading usually needs operations that can be done in parallel and is not very important which portion/thread will finish first - when you print something - you want the pages to come to the printer in the correct order - so multi threading there is not really going to be very beneficial even if it can be realized!

Regards,
Stefan

[sietracky]

- make sure to select a PDF-printer (like "PDF-XChange Lite" or "PDF-XChange Standard) as the destination printer
- at Advanced Print Options - Print, select "Documents and Markups" (or even "Whole Content")
- mark the check box at "Print as Image

I have read the last item as related to the XChange Lite printer but recognized now, that it is part of the common printer dialog and independent of the kind of printer I am selecting.
So I can use it with any kind of virtual pdf printer,
thank you

[Timur Born]

Editor would surely be able to send several preprocessed pages in a batch to the printer driver and then follow suite just the same way that OCR does?! In the end the pages are ordered correctly in both printing and OCR.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello all,

@sietracky - Yes indeed that's an option in the Editor's print dialogue and not in the drivers.

@Timur - It can prepare several pages simultaneously indeed - but then they still need to end up in the single queue the printer can handle!
I will have it checked but it might not be practical even if technically possible to use multiple threads for printing one file.

Regards,
Stefan

[Timur Born]

It doesn't matter so much, because for any documents more than a few pages long I still have to use Adobe Reader anyway.

I just printed a 28 pages document that takes 30 seconds to print by Reader DC, resulting in a 50 mb print size. The same document takes 4:30 minutes to print by Editor, resulting in a 250 mb print size. One reason likely being that Reader sends the embedded Type 1 fonts as fonts to the printer driver, whereas Editor has to calculate them into vectors. Most of the pages is image data, though (even much of the text).

Don't even ask how many minutes my printer needs to start the print-job when I print 2 out of 28 pages via Editor compared to Reader.

Editor has a tendency to display/print text somewhat more bold than Reader, which can help with readability. I prefer that for screen display and sometimes specifically use this for printing as well. If I have the time spare that is.

[Patrick-Tracker Supp]

Hi Timur,

Our hope is that you will not find the need to use Adobe at all. Today is a stat holiday here in Canada and in the UK (where Stefan is), so the dev team is not available for questioning. Stefan should hear back from the dev team next week - perhaps some good news will be the result!

Thank you for your patience and understanding!