People don't seem to understand exactly what a PDF is. It all depends
on how the PDF was created. If the PDF was created with Acrobat, you
stand a much better chance of editing the file. If the file was created
by scanning a paper document on a copier, that is a different story. Of
course, it is a PDF, but it is a PDF that consists of a large IMAGE.
The PDF code just "wraps up the image" so that a standard PDF reader can
display it. There is no text to edit only an image.
As someone has mentioned here, you could use a good OCR package to
convert the image into text but this is not really a PDF editor. You
could convert the image to text with the OCR package if it were a JPG,
GIF, PNG or other image formated file.
As Tom states, you could open the PDF file with GIMP and then use layers
to overlay small parts of the document with new text. This wold require
matching fonts and font sizes and would rely heavily on trial and
error. It can be done and the result can be saved as a PDF.
Of course the best way to edit a PDF is to have access to the original
document from which the PDF was created and edit that document -
probably a Word document - saving the edited document as a PDF.
I often get asked how to edit a PDF document that was scanned from the
copier. My answer is this. "If I could edit a PDF file that was
created with a document, I would not be working here. I would be a
wealthy man and would not need to work."
Jared Lynn wrote:
On a similar topic, what would you use to edit the text that you have
scanned in?
Jared Lynn
PORTA CUSD #202 Technology Coordinator
E-mail: jl...@porta202.org <mailto:jl...@porta202.org>
Phone: 217-501-4920
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Steele, Thomas C
<tste...@manteno5.org <mailto:tste...@manteno5.org>> wrote:
…and for those more complex documents, Photoshop (and I think
GIMP) can render PDF files as a graphic. You would not be able to
edit type (you could replace it with a new text box) but you can
use the selection tools to move things around or add elements.
-TS
Thomas C. Steele
Technology Director
Manteno CUSD #5
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