Answered
Flattening PDF in Acrobat Reader
How do I flatten the layers in a PDF so the text isn't editable anymore and it just becomes one big image? I feel like this should be a really simple feature but can't find it anywhere?
try67Correct answer
Community Expert
October 2, 2017
Well yes obviously if some genius thought it’s important enough they could get past, but at least don’t want to hand it to them on a silver platter. Especially if someone makes a change by accident and don’t notice it then it becomes a big “he said she said” issue because their version of the invoice doesn’t match ours. Also, being editable often screws up the formatting & layout and then it looks bad.
Anyway, the bottom line is we don’t want it to be editable, we want it to be sent as a single layer image. How do we do that?
Convert the PDF to an image.
Create a new PDF from this image.
Add a signature field.
Apply a security policy that prevents changes to the file, but allows signing a digital signature field.
Digitally sign the new PDF.
Distribute the signed copy.
If anyone messes with it the digital signature will become invalidated and there's no need for "he said she said". If the signature is not valid, the document has been tempered with.
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