invisible QR code

[Nemo Sampaio]

I wanna make a QR Code only visible when the PDF is printed out. Does anybody have an idea?

[try67]

Should this code be dynamic, or is it just always the same? If the latter you can place it as the image of a button field and define its visibility to be "Hidden, but printable".

[Nemo Sampaio]

Thanks for your tip. The idea is to have a QR code on this whitepaper, so once you print it the QR place when I had the button with a call to action. Should I do that on the acrobat?

[try67]

Yes, you can add the button with the image in Acrobat.

[Nemo Sampaio]

I've tried to have the QR on a different layer so I can set it to be hidden and pritable. The problem is you still can see it on the finder's

quickview.

[Luke Jennings]

You can add a white box over the QR code (In InDesign or Illustrator), set the box fill to a spot color set to 0,0,0,0, and overprint the box. Acrobat & Reader won't show the QR code because the layer is set to never view, web browsers won't show the QR code because they don't respect the overprint setting. You will need to explain to the users that Acrobat or Reader must be used to print the PDF. Unfortunately, the print preview in Acrobat will still show the QR code.

[Nemo Sampaio]

Sounds like an good idea, but unfortunately my Indesign (2019) does not give me permission to overprint the box, since is a white box.

[Luke Jennings]

Yes, InDesign and Illustrator make it hard to overprint the swatch "[Paper]" or a swatch set to 0,0,0,0, after all, why would you, as it would vanish. But there are times when you do want to overprint a spot color white (a window cling on clear vinyl for example) so if you make a spot color, name it as you like, and color it 0,0,0,0, you can use it to cover an image and set it to overprint (or multiply).

It's a bit of a hack, but it works.