Flattening a pdf

[StefBowker]

Hi all, Does flattening a pdf in Acrobat mean that images cannot be lifted, moved, or removed? TIA

[try67 · Accepted solution]

Flattening a PDF can mean different things, but none of them prevents someone from copying an image from it. It can make it more difficult, but never impossible (since they can always take a screenshot of the file and extract the image from it).

[StefBowker]

Does it prevent lifting an image rather than a screen snapshot? Is the advice in this article correct? 

http://teacherink.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-flatten-and-secure-adobe-pdfs.html

[try67]

No, it doesn't. Securing the file makes it more difficult, but it's quite easy to get around it (I won't get into how to do it, though), and this form of "flattening" does not prevent you from selecting an individual image once protection has been removed. The only way to do that is to export the page as an image and then create a new PDF file from that image. Then you won't be able to select any individual parts of it on their own.

[StefBowker]

Thanks, that's what I thought.