PDF XChange Forum

Hi. The document I have was downloaded from the internet. When I examine page contents I see that each page is made up of a text element and two image elements. For example page 1 has the following as content: "Tt Text: "r Second edition v' h r/: ^\..." ; Image [:1012; h 1402]; Image [506; h 701]. So, can I merge the two images into one image? Thank you. Rich

OK let me psyche thru this. When I look at the content of page 1, I see that there is text and two images. I think therefore, that the document was OCRed, and that is why I have a text element. Now, I am supposing that page 1 is made up of three layers. However the Layers Pane does not show any layers, which I cannot understand. Because if there are no layers how can a page be rendered onscreen? The image of size w :1012 and h: 1402 mask type: None. The other image w: 506 and h: 701 mask type: External Mask. If I am to merge or flatten two images, do I need to have two layers appearing in the Layers Pane? Thanks. P.S. I am assuming flattening will merge the two images files (producing just one image file), which may not be correct.

EDIT: OK I just read that "In the PDF specification Layers are handled a differently than in most other software, such as graphics applications." That will explain why I see my pages yet there are no layers. Also I read "In the PDF specifications, "Layer" is a term that was used by the Graphics industry and Adobe in particular used it in the context of PDF files.  It is actually a somewhat misleading description of what is happening, yet is commonly accepted as the "standard" name for this function. More appropriate terms for "layers" in the PDF format may be "Optional content groups", or "Visibility groups". There is no "Z axis" as there is no true order for layers in this format. Layers are instead intended to toggle the visibility of content, such as to quickly show or hide annotations, or to have a single document that displays for example a specific language, depending on the readers system locale.".

Hi, richard1298

Glad to hear you found that article about how "Layers" work in PDF, it is certainly a mouthful and rather difficult to wrap your head around, all thanks to adobes "perfectly illogical" naming sense.

Now back to youre first question, no there is no way to specifically merge two images within our editor. The only function which could accomplish that is the "rasterize pages" tool, which would also have the effect of including all the text and other content on your page as part of the image, entirely removing the original content to replace it with this image.

The best way I can think of to accomplish this (without affecting anything beyond those two images) is to use a specialized image editing application to combine the two images, then remove them from the document and replace them both with the newly created version.

Kind regards,

Hi. I've no idea why or how it came to be that each page in the document contains two images. I find it a bit weird. For all pages, one image has most of the page and the other (external mask) fills in areas that are not covered by the main image. And the mask image is about one quarter the size of the main image. OK, I've got a result by first exporting images to a folder on the desktop. That has merged or flattened the image files for each page. Then I've used the "Replace Image" tool manually replacing the main image and deleting the mask.. So now all pages just have one image. Not sure if I could have automated the replace image process.

Hi Richard,

good to hear you sorted this out.

I don't think we have an automated option for this.

I have a similar situation. There are two pictures, each of which is the size of a sheet. They "mosaic" form the image of the page. I do not know why it was necessary to form the page image in this way. Maybe it's protection from indexing by search engines. However, it was only natural for me to highlight these images in the Content panel and try to combine them. However, I did not find anything similar in the context menu. It is a pity that this function is not in the application.
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Yes, in this particular situation I can use the "Rasterize Pages" feature. But first, I don't know the resolution of these images. This must be manually calculated based on their dimensions in pixels and dimensions in millimeters on the sheet. Choosing too low a resolution will irreversibly destroy details, choosing too high a resolution will unnecessarily increase the file size. Secondly, there can be many graphic objects on the page, and only some of them need to be combined.

A topic that at first glance discusses a similar problem is "Merge several pictures on one page" (2018-07-18) https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic.php?t=31234

Hi,

1) If you like to see all the image information: select the picture, right-mouse-click, "Recompress image".

2) Maybe you can also use the Snapshot Tool for creating a new image (desired DPI can be set via File > Preferences > Snapshot Tool).

Kind regards.

Thanks for the input Willy - hopefully that can assist in resolving Jensen's issue.

Kind regards,