HAPY NEW YEAR! & Easiest Way to Delete an Existing Text Layer - And Will It Mess Up My Current Comments SOLVED

[shade-cabin-hammock]

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R ! ! !

Thanks to ALL the good folks here at Tracker who've made such a fine ploughshare for us to do this digital work with! Your consistent and cheerful replies to our alarmingly abstract issues are a benchmark of exemplary support for every firm to follow!

Thanks to al the good mateys, too - fellow users and PDFXrs who chip in with CLEAR ways to get things done borne out of impressively getting things done with PDFX each day!

How can I easily and quickly delete the text layer that exists in any PDF?

And, I've gotten about halfway through the file and made a huge amount of highlights and what not. I always copy the text with the highlight, so I'm guessing those won't be affected. Yes?

After I'm able to delete the text, then I'll re-run the OCR. Seems like I have TWO layers of the same text now for the whole book. I'll delete ALL of them that I find once I know how to do it.

Many thanks,

SCH

[PHK]

First, I must agree with your sentiments about the Tracker team and positive user/contributors and Happy New Year to all!

Maybe this graphic goes some way to dealing with your inquiry:

image.png

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi, PHK!

Yep, yep on the good team and users! We're on the same page!

Ah! I got to the location you very kindly pointed out. Alas...EACH of the 700 pages in the book have a text layer of their own. Is there any way I can scrap the lot of them in one go?

Perhaps there's an end-run: rasterize? That changes all pages to images again - am I right?

Goal here: get rid of what seems to be TWO layers of text. Delete ALL text layers from every page in one fell swoop. Rescan to have just that as the text for the document.

Sincerely,

SCH

[PHK]

I think all of the Tracker folk are home nursing hangovers today so we here in Kindergarten will just have to cope without our minders.

...Ah! I got to the location you very kindly pointed out. Alas...EACH of the 700 pages in the book have a text layer of their own. Is there any way I can scrap the lot of them in one go?

I don't know how you got to 700 separate page text layers. If each page from the scanned book (I am assuming that), then there should be 700 thumbnails and the Content panel should show the pages as hierarchical parents like the visible "Page 1" at the top of my screenshot above. Do you have a separate file for each page? If so, you can Combine Files to get them into one file, etc.

Perhaps there's an end-run: rasterize? That changes all pages to images again - am I right?

Maybe, I don't know. I am unclear on what all rasterizing does so I would not be comfortable offering any advice there.

Goal here: get rid of what seems to be TWO layers of text.

Just two layers from a 700-page book? It would seem to me that there should be either ONE content layer or SEVEN HUNDRED.

Delete ALL text layers from every page in one fell swoop. Rescan to have just that as the text for the document.

Sorry, I am not following what you are trying to do. Why would you be rescanning? Maybe you should be thinking about converting the book to a Word document using the Conversion tools. Try a sample of a few pages first to see if that works; do not try 700 pages at once. That would risk over-taxing your computing resources with all the unpleasantness that implies.

Sincerely,

SCH
[/quote]

Hopefully, the sober pros will have a better take on this, Good luck!

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

Haha, you aren't entirely alone, though the rest of the team is out until tomorrow (when I will be gone for a dentist appointment).

@Shade, (note that in PDF, "layers" are another type of content entirely) Regarding why you may be seeing extra "layers" being added, the OCR does have facilities to prevent duplicate text from being added, but if this was not enabled, you could certainly see some overlap or additional "sets" of text being generated.

image.png

Unfortunately there is no way to automatically remove "duplicate" text that was added when these options were disabled, because there is no really effective way to detect what is and isn't a duplicate. Even in the most well formed documents, there is some overlap because of how PDF stores its data.

As such, your idea to rasterize and then OCR again is likely the best way to quickly remove multiple sets of text from the file and end up with only a single set. When you are rasterizing, I recommend configuring your settings like so, as it does not sounds like form fields or comments were duplicated, only the base content text.

image(1).png

I should mention though, this will likely also increase the file size by a fair amount because rasterization will generate a single high quality image for each page. If that is an issue, you will unfortunately need to do this process manually.

Kind regards,

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hello, PHK & Good Mr. Daniel!

PHK!
I don't know how this document got this way but you're right PHK - 700 pages with 700 contents, AND seemingly 1400, because I had re-OCR-ed it.

Daniel!

Ah! When I read you had to go to the dentist I thought - Oh, gosh! I know how THAT feels!

Sometimes I wonder: to me the process of good ol' Dr. dent is "O.K." (as far as that goes) once the Novocain kicks in. Usually it's the BILL that is the hard part!

Hopefully, reliable Canada has that all under the national health care!

Either way - you are hereby authorized to be fully non-sober before arriving for the procedure!

And! The Rasterizing process DID the trick. I followed all your images to a "T", right down to the image quality. It took a good few hours, but now I have 700 image only pages - text is all gone AND, AND! All the commenting STAYED in place.

How about THAT?! ANOTHER wee miracle, courtesy of all y'all! GREAT!

Next step: how to manage the new file?

It went from 52Mb to 527.

What's the fewest number of steps I should take next to wrangle it down to a slimmer size AND reintroduce the text searchability?

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

You should try the Enhanced OCR if you have an Editor Plus/Pro license (please do not post any license key info in the forums!) - this would allow you to replace the pixels with actual text - and make the file smaller.

You can also try the "Save as Optimized" feature in the Editor.

However if you have the original file with the smaller 50MB size - you should be able to e.g. extract only the images from it, and make a new file (without the OCR layers) and then run a new fresh OCR on an image only file that should be with a smaller original size, and the original images (so no reprocessing done on them that could decrease the quality and recognition rate).

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Ah! I see. I see. Many options, yep. That's good.

You wrote:

"...EXTRACT ONLY THE IMAGES FROM IT, AND MAKE A NEW FILE..."

I do have the Editor Plus:

2023-01-04_21-05-26-194.png

Please under which menus are those? I looked under Organize & Convert, but the choice didn't jump out at me?

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

Apologies - I was thinking of PDF Tools. There you do have an Extract Images option:

image.png

And while with the Editor you can also Export images out of the PDF file - it is done one at a time:

image(1).png

Which will obviously defeat the purpose of my earlier suggestion!

So if you have a Pro license - you will have access to PDF Tools as well and can use the tool from my first image in this post.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Ah! Got it. Okey doke So far I've run.

2023-01-07_11-20-09-351.png

Which has given me multiple text elements on each page. It seems goode enough for me. Don't know if there's a alternate way, or expected outcome. How does that look?

2023-01-07_11-21-40-967.png

Contingent question, please, if I can. Right now the file searches correctly. Seems to have just one layer of text, though in successive lines, on each page. As I said, so long as it searches correctly, that's ok.

Thing is, it's gone from a trim bantam-weight 50Mb to a heavyweight 500+ Mb!

2023-01-07_11-06-03-041.png

Among these tools left in my Plus toolkit - what should I do to wrap up this conversion with the best outcome? And, should I run the suggested processes overnight as it may take a while (520 pages)?

2023-01-07_11-25-33-844.png

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

Yes - when you create a new file from images - it can initially become quite big.
Please try the "File -> Save as Optimized" and the file size should reduce significantly.
If you are running the Enhanced OCR - you can also select to get the image part removed when the OCR is run, and the text is added instead of the image pixels - that should make your files even smaller than the original 50 MB.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Got it!

You wrote:

IF YOU ARE RUNNING THE ENHANCED OCR YOU CAN ALSO SELECT TO GET THE IMAGE PART REMOVED WHEN THE OCR IS RUN, AND THE TEXT IS ADDED INSTEAD OF THE IMAGE PIXELS THAT SHOULD MAKE YOUR FILES EVEN SMALLER...

I didn't see that as an option here. Where do I find that?

2023-01-07_11-20-09-351.png

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

You can change to "Editable text and Images" in the drop down under "Output Options":

image.png

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Ah! Roger that, and THANK YOU!

Seeing as how its a BIG file, 500+ pages, and I'll be wrangling with it for a good little while AND it has comments all over it already...how should I proceed in order to get the "prettiest" / best performing file to work with?

Re-OCR the file with the setting you've suggested there?

Or, just optimize?

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

If you want it "pretty" as in - to keep it looking as the original - then just OCR with an invisible text on top of the images, and then optimize the file to reduce the size.

If you will need to make modifications to the text - editable text and images will likely be more useful.

In either case - make sure you do keep back up copies in case something goes in an unexpected direction - as OCRing a 500 page file will likely take some time - so you do want to have a back up!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hello Stefan,

Ah! Let it run overnight and...it shrank it down 40%! Alas...that leaves it a bit of a p a a a g g g g e e e loading 300Mb still.

So, my plan is to Re-OCR as you advised with the delete image setting.

Any other slimming tactic you can advise.

Recall that my goal is to get rid of / replace the text layer(s) in the 50 Mb original file.

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

Then I would recommend you to start with a copy of the original 50 mb file, remove the OCR done to it, then run our EOCR with "Editable text and images" or "Fine Page Content" - and see what that gives you!

You might also want to e.g. extract 10-15 pages from the original, and run some tests on it - as OCRing that shorter file will be quicker and allow you to test different configurations before you decide which one you want to run on the full document which might take some hours.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Any way to BULK remove the OCR - its one on every page? Can PDF-X Plus do that?

Back to rasterize --> 550Mb?

What's the best way?

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello shade-cabin-hammock,

In the contents pane - you can do Options (the cog wheels) - > Select -> Text and this will select all of your text on all the pages so that you can delete that quickly. Then run the OCR on the 50 MB file.

image_2023_01_11T17_33_12_978Z.png

Kind regards,
Stefan

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Hi Stefan,

Yeah! Roger THAT, most PDF-est expert PERSON! Done in a SNAP!

Will run the OCR overnight and post results. <thumbs up> (We need a thumbs up icon for the forum, eh? )

Sincerely,

SCH

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

[shade-cabin-hammock]

Annn-Dah!

I've got a NICE - SINGLE LAYERED text document right here weighing in at just

59,254Kb

That's just a pound or two over the original weight!

PLUS - the 300+ comments I had made already to the file...didn't move an INCH!

PDF-X - the tools that DELIVER!

Thanks EVERYONE for all the help!

SCH

[Radi - PDF-XChange]