Is this normal when placing cropped PDFs?

[Doc Maik]

Hello all!

I work with Acrobat and Indesign since more than 15 years and never had this effect. There is a one page PDF which was originally exported in A4, then cropped to only show a graphic that is on the page. The page also contains text. 

Then it was placed in Indesign, with the boundary box active, so it would also only show the graphic. Then the INDD was exported as PDF. In that final PDF I can search and find text that was used in the placed PDF, but the text neither shows in Acrobat when viewing the PDF nor it can be selected when switching to edit mode. It's only sort of selected when jumping from find result to find result.

All that was around the graphics on the cropped and placed PDF is still there, but remains hidden and cannot even be found/highlighted using the content panel. Is this normal?

[Peter Spier]

Is it normal? Probably.

Do you have the box for Clip Image Data to Frames checked in the compression section of the export settings?

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

In short (and to the best of my understanding)... yes. You've placed the whole document in your doc, so all of its contents are found even if you've visually cropped or framed it. It's a bit like content being found in overset text.

The only solution is to crop the PDF outside of InDesign and place that, and it may be necessary to reduce the PDF size so that the cropped areas are discarded as well.

[Peter Spier]

@James Gifford—NitroPress  As I read the post, it looks to me like the cropping WAS done in Acrobat, but in my experience that's only a mask, not a deletion, so the effect is the same as cropping in InDesign.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Thx for clarifying. I don't do it often enough to have a complete grasp, but I do know that "cropping" is often just masking, leaving all the outlying content (sometimes text meant to be redacted!) still there. Not sure what process or save-as actually reduces the PDF to the displayed portion.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

@Peter Spier is correct--cropping in Acrobat is simply resetting the CropBox. 

https://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/page-boxes

You can remove some/most of the cropped data by sanitizing the PDF.

[Doc Maik]

@James Gifford—NitroPress : Yes, cropping done in Acrobat before placement. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Doc Maik

There was a thread about that - someone wanted to get rid of "confidential" data - the only solution was to use Transparency Flattener - if I remember correctly.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Doc Maik

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/pdf-export-ohne-abgedeckte-schrift-und-objekte/m... 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Redaction and sanitizing the PDF in Acrobat would be the safest option. 

[Doc Maik]

Correct. I sort of sanitized it now. ;o)

[Doc Maik]

@Peter Spier Yes, option set.

But...image like in picture? I'm not sure how this could help, because the placed PDF contained only vector graphics and text. However, I solved it by resetting the crop frame to zero and removing everything around the actual graphics.

For me, it still seems normal. In my logic, ID isn't supposed to forward that "outside data" when creating a new PDF.