Inspiring

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(Adobe Acrobat DC) Converting TEXT layers to SHAPES during export...

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
August 30, 2018
2 replies
7709 views

Using Acrobat only, I would like to load up a PDF file and re-save it with the text layers converted to shapes. Ideally, with absolutely nothing else being affected.

Is there an export option to help me do this?

Thanks!

Edit and convert PDFs

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Correct answer Dov Isaacs

There is no predefined concept in PDF of text layers. PDF files don't even have to have any layers and if they do, they are not bound by any rules (at least in terms of the PDF specification) as to whether they may or may not have text within them.

If you wish to convert text as realized with fonts into filled (and/or outlined) polygons, you can do this with Acrobat Preflight's Convert Fonts to Outlines profile. This won't affect anything other than text as realized with fonts, but it will make your PDF file uneditable with the Acrobat text editing tools, incapable of being searched for text, incapable of reasonably being exported to Word or similar formats, could seriously bloat the file size, and may significantly reduce quality of print and especially display, typically making text look overly bold.

Any good reason for wanting to do this? Other than for certain sign cutting equipment, there really isn't any rendering reasons that we know of that make this a good practice?!?!?

- Dov

atutton

Participant

Thanks for the awesome info - I know you felt that this was a weird need, but we used it today to get artwork from a sign vendor into outlines and over to After Effects. There's applications for this and it definitely saves hours of liaison with the sign maker to try and find someone who can convert on there end, or locating fonts on my end, or butchering the design.

Dov IsaacsCorrect answer

Legend

There is no predefined concept in PDF of text layers. PDF files don't even have to have any layers and if they do, they are not bound by any rules (at least in terms of the PDF specification) as to whether they may or may not have text within them.

If you wish to convert text as realized with fonts into filled (and/or outlined) polygons, you can do this with Acrobat Preflight's Convert Fonts to Outlines profile. This won't affect anything other than text as realized with fonts, but it will make your PDF file uneditable with the Acrobat text editing tools, incapable of being searched for text, incapable of reasonably being exported to Word or similar formats, could seriously bloat the file size, and may significantly reduce quality of print and especially display, typically making text look overly bold.

Any good reason for wanting to do this? Other than for certain sign cutting equipment, there really isn't any rendering reasons that we know of that make this a good practice?!?!?

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

U

Under S.Author

Inspiring

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Dov+Isaacs wrote
If you wish to convert text as realized with fonts into filled (and/or outlined) polygons, you can do this with Acrobat Preflight's Convert Fonts to Outlines profile. This won't affect anything other than text as realized with fonts, but it will make your PDF file uneditable with the Acrobat text editing tools, incapable of being searched for text, incapable of reasonably being exported to Word or similar formats, could seriously bloat the file size, and may significantly reduce quality of print and especially display, typically making text look overly bold.

If I upload a PDF file on my site's root folder, Google will eventually index it; especially if my site links to it in any way. It will sniff out whatever info it can gather from the file and use that as preview copy in its search result listings. That's why you can see preview text to PDF documents in Google results before opening the file.

But if the text is converted to outline/shapes (or polygons) then it can't do that. The only info that could be mined from the file is whatever's in the meta areas (title, description, etc.) because as far as crawlers are concerned, there's no text in there.

Regardless of why someone would want to protect the textual contents of their PDF files from outside sniffing (and want them only to use what's in the meta area) is there a way to do this WITHOUT converting all text layers to outline/shapes? Maybe a "Protect text" checkbox somewhere in the export dialogs that could 'shield' page content from a.i. while remaining visible to human eyes?

U

Under S.Author

Inspiring

I understand what you are trying to do but unfortunately, you can't have your cake and eat it too!

There is nothing in the PDF file format that provides the facility to “somehow” protect the text from being accessed but allowing it to be rendered fully and properly other than password protecting the PDF, i.e., requiring a password to actually open up the PDF file.

In terms of Google, I was under the impression that there is an HTML tag you can use on your site to advise Google that you don't consent to their nosing around on your website and indexing anything or specific items. I don't know the details, but I am sure you might even be able to use Google to find that.

- Dov

I understand what you are trying to do but unfortunately, you can't have your cake and eat it too!
There is nothing in the PDF file format that provides the facility to “somehow” protect the text from being accessed but allowing it to be rendered fully and properly other than password protecting the PDF, i.e., requiring a password to actually open up the PDF file.

Exactly the confirmation I was looking for, thanks (you'd be surprised how many times I asked "cake & eat it too" questions that someone had a solution for, guess I'm bound to overreach every now and then).

Maybe a nifty feature to add in the future, then? As privacy becomes more of a concern, having a "switch" that could hide the PDF's text content *like* it was password-protected (so that it's really only visible to human eyes) could prove useful. After all, bots do more than simply index, they mine for personal data as well. Heck, you could even build in an exception for Google, if ranking is a concern.

Just throwing the idea out there in the universe.

PS: I just discovered that InDesign allows us to protect PDF text content from being COPIED into ram, without requiring a psw to open the document. So we're kinda halfway there already.

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