Changing font color of elements that Acrobat doesn't recognize as font?

[maude_1873]

Hi everyone-

I work within healthcare and have a co-worker who struggles with dyslexia. 

To help with this, printing documents in purple helps significantly in her ability to read healthcare clinic schedules. However, when saving the schedules, Adobe Acrobat recognizes the text blocks as individual image elements rather than text, making it nearly impossible to change the font to purple. 

I was wondering if there were any others out there with dyslexia or are color blind who benefit from altering the color of elements on Acrobat and have found an efficient way to do this. 

I have tried converting the PDF to a Word document and can manage to get some of it to change to purple text, but since it is not being recognized as a font, I essentially have to put a "filter" on all the image elements. Additionally, the image elements are not combined as one single page but are segmented into small sections that make it very difficult to change the color or add a filter to multiple elements at once (even if using CTRL or SHFT).

Any thoughts or suggestions? They would be greatly appreciated.

[try67]

This type of thing really needs to be done in the source application, not in the PDF. Do you have access to the original file that was used to create the PDF? Typically it would be a Word file, InDesign file, HTML file, or even an image file.

If you do, make the changes there (if possible), and then create a new PDF from it. If it's an image file, though, you will need to use an image editor, like Photoshop, where replacing one color with another is much easier to achieve than in Acrobat.

[maude_1873]

Since patient schedules are downloaded as PDFs from an Electronic Health Record system, there really is not many ways to manipulate the original file. I have searched through and through for a way to change font color within the system itself, but it doesn't seem to exist. If I can't find a solution on here, then I plan on contacting the EHR to seek solutions.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

This can be done with a bit of customizing on an Acrobat Preflight Profile.

I would usually use Enfocus Pitstop for this kind of thing, as Acrobat's preflight profiles are a bit wanting in this department, but I HAVE cobbled one together that can make single spot colour file out of a full colour PDF. There may be better ways out there, but what mine does is convert the document, first, to an all greyscale (K) document, and then maps the K to a spot colour.

Like so (see vid)

If you want, I can send you the Preflight profile and you can test it on a file.

[maude_1873]

Thank you Brad! I will look into this- it seems promising 

[maude_1873]

Could you send the Preflight profile when you get a chance? 🙂

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I have sent you a DM!

[Luke Jennings3]

There is an existing preflight fixup that will map a specific color to another color, you must first use the Output Preview tool to determine the existing color values. The example screen shot is changing blue objects to black only. This works for both RGB and CMYK colors. In order to edit the settings, you must first duplicate the existing fixup from the little Options fly out menu.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yes, there is, but it doesn't do everything required. The custom profile I made is a combination of some of these standard fixes, and can be appled to the whole document or parts of it (e.g. everything except images, or vice versa)