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Question

Remove background in Acrobat Pro

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 21, 2024
8 replies
16807 views

Hello,

I have scanned an article from a Newspaper, and to remove the background I have made :

1) In Acrobat Pro, I click on the "Modify" panel.

2) Then I click on the background and click on the "Delete" key.

Result : all the "grey" background of the newspaper has gone, so I have a white background with the text.

All is OK for the text, but I see that a part of the drawing has disappeared (the drawing is the face of a person).

By removing the "grey" background, how to keep the newspaper drawing ?

How to

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

@Luke Jennings3

You have said : "While an image editor is the best tool for this job, there are some Acrobat tools that can do a passable job. First go to Tools> Scan & OCR> Enhance> Camera Image> Enhance> Adjust level (+), this will remove most of the background. "

I have tried to do "Scan and OCR", then I have this :

But I don't know where to "adjust level" in order to "remove most of the background" ?

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

See attached screen shot, save pdf after adjusting levels.

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

I understand very well what you are saying, but you are with the ancient Acrobat GUI, and I am with the new Acrobat GUI where I don't succeed to find the adjust enhancement level + / - :

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

@try67

You have said : "You can use the free Gimp application, for example, or the Convert Colors command of Acrobat, but it's much more limited."

As you are talking about the "convert color command of Acrobat", what is it exactly ?

I thought it was corresponding to that :

try67

Community Expert

Yes, that's the one. I thought it could also be applied to images, but I might have been wrong about that. In that case using an external editor is your best option, as mentioned above.

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

@try67

Your idea was very interesting, because my goal is to try to do all that job inside Acrobat Pro. I do not plan to buy Photoshop or use Gimp. And I see that Luke has succeeded to do it very well inside Acrobat.

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

In Acrobat Pro, about the "Convert color" command, how to set it in order to improve the background of my ¨PDF musical score ?

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

While an image editor is the best tool for this job, there are some Acrobat tools that can do a passable job. First go to Tools> Scan & OCR> Enhance> Camera Image> Enhance> Adjust level (+), this will remove most of the background. You can then use a preflight fixup to darken the midtones. Go to Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups, type "tone" in the search window, select the preflight shown in the attached screen shot and duplicate it from the "Options" fly out menu (you can't edit the original preflight), edit the duplicate preflight and select one of the midtone correction options, apply the preflight by clicking "fix" at the bottom of the window.

screenshot-14-54-20_enhanced.pdf

screenshot-14-54-20_-25%_midtone.pdf

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Acrobat n'est pas un logiciel de retouche d'image.

Ci-dessous un exemple de ce qu'on peut facilement obtenir dans Photoshop avec le plus ancien et le plus basique des réglages existants : les "Niveaux" (Levels). Le truc à savoir c'est qu'avant d'utiliser les Niveaux il faut convertir l'image (qui est en mode RVB) en mode "Niveaux de gris" (grayscale), sinon le noir reste marronasse.

Le réglage de Niveaux est disponible dans tous les bons logiciels de retouche d'image, à commencer par The Gimp.

S'il y a beaucoup de pages à traiter l'idéal serait d'utiliser un logiciel qui permet d'automatiser cette opération (comme Photoshop, pour The Gimp je ne sais pas).

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

About my problem on this musical score, this is not coming from a scan (it was downloaded from a site).

The problem is I have not Photoshop and don't want to buy it. And I have seen Photoshop videos where I see we can remove the background around an object (by selecting the outline of this object), but in a msuical score, how to do the same when we have a lot of music notes ?

I don't understand why the edit function of Acrobat pro is unable to remove the background in such a case (directly inside a PDF).

try67

Community Expert

You downloaded it, but the person who created it did so from a scan. It can be clearly seen in the screenshot.

The reason Acrobat can't do it is it's only a PDF editor (and not really that, either), but PDFs can contain all kinds of media so it relies on external applications for editing images, audio, video, etc., even though it can display or play all of them. That's just how it works. And you don't need to use Photoshop. You can use the free Gimp application, for example, or the Convert Colors command of Acrobat, but it's much more limited.

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pierret18811376Author

Inspiring

In another case, in a PDF, I have a musical score with a yellow background. How to remove the yellow background while keeping the best quality on the music notes ? I don't succeed to do it on my PDF in Acrobat Pro.