this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone knew of a FOSS editing app to use on PDFs, just to add text and and mark things out, I tried GNU image editor but it just works on images exclusively. Any ideas are appreciated, thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (7 children)

If you are trying to mark something sensitive out, make sure that you are deleting the actual text or convert the PDF to a flat image after. PDFs can store information in text and images, so if you just draw over some text thinking you are marking it out, there is a chance that the mark out is just a image layer sitting on top of the sensitive text. A way to check this is opening the PDF in Firefox after and toggle Reader View (button in the address bar or F9) to see if you can still see to marked out information.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

If you're trying to redact documents, convert it to a jpg and use a black cover (not blur) then wipe the metadata. Dont use a pdf at all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

How could I convert the pictures back to a PDF when I'm done?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I think GIMP can do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I dont think you should, but if you must use img2pdf

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Not OP, but I'm guessing PDFs add more metadata that is harder to remove. Just a guess

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