Limit combining images into PDF?

[BrianZebra]

Hello, I've exported a 5k page pdf from InDesign and it works fine, but if I export the 5k pages as images, and then try to combine those images into a pdf, I run into trouble.

If I go to the add files and drag the files in I get the following error

<file path> .... could not be added to the list because it does not exist. Then If you click ok, it goes to #2, 3, 4 and so on. I have to use task manager to close Acrobat or click through 5,000 popups. 

If I click add files and shift select all 5000 images, it only imports 514 of them.  

Is there an easy way to combine all 5000 images into a pdf in one shot?

[Bernd Alheit]

Why does you export the pages as images? 

[BrianZebra]

The license of the clip art says I have to flatten all the pages so they can't be extracted. I've looked into flattening the transparency and securing the document but there are tons of places online that allow the removal of the passwords.  If I save the pages as images there isn't anyway for the images or the text to be extracted.

[try67]

Sure there are. You can always take a screenshot and crop the image from it. Protecting such assets is really not very feasible.

[BrianZebra]

Except that you can't extract the whole image as there is content on top of the image if it is flattened. So sure you can take a screen shot but you can't extract the whole image which is the point.   Then if you want to OCR the whole thing to extract the text you could try that too.  So yes, there are ways, but it would take considerable more work than just exporting all the images or saving the document as a word doc or text file. 

[Document Geek]

Apply a 99.99% opacity, then export to PDF using Acrobat 5.0 compatibility. That will rasterize everything and flatten it while simultaneously creating the PDF.

[JR Boulay]

"The license of the clip art says I have to flatten all the pages so they can't be extracted.

If I save the pages as images there isn't anyway for the images or the text to be extracted."

"Except that you can't extract the whole image as there is content on top of the image if it is flattened."

This is not serious.

It's DIY that doesn't protect anything at all.

[BrianZebra]

It does protect the original image.  If I take whatever clipart and write words over the top of the clip art, if I don't flatten / merge it, someone could just export the image. But if I save it as a image the words are merged with the image so you can't extract the original image as it was.   Sure you could go ahead open it in photoshop or something and try to reconstruct the original image, but I've satisified the terms of the license I used the images under.   It is better than leaving everything in layers and putting a password on it that any number of websites can take off in a few seconds.   Don't get me wrong, I still password protect the files, just that merging them down / saving them as flattened images AND password protecting is better in my opinion. 

Which goes back to the original question, why is there a limit on how many images I merge into a pdf and is there a way around this limit?

[Bernd Alheit]

On Windows try printing to Adobe PDF with the option print as image.