This seems like it should be more straightforward.

March 24, 2011 3:19 PM

I've got a PDF (a magazine). I'm trying export some pages from this PDF (my article), as a separate PDF. I'm on a Mac (10.6.7). This seems like it should be easy, but I can't print my selected pages to PDF (it's grayed out in the "Save to PDF" drop-down), nor can I find any options to save-selected-pages-as or export-to. My searches have only turned up now-obsolete, non-functioning programs like PDFlab and PDFsam. What am I missing? Should I just print out the pages and scan them back in?
posted by finnb to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

With the PDF open in Preview, you can select the pages in the right hand pane (make sure it's in thumbnail view) that aren't your article, and then go to the edit menu and choose "Delete Selected Pages."
posted by rustcellar at 3:29 PM on March 24, 2011

The creators of the PDF may have turned security features on which will make modifying the document nearly impossible. I don't know that Preview or Reader have the tools to let you know whether or not security has been implemented though.
posted by lekvar at 3:35 PM on March 24, 2011

If it's security locked, try print screening it via Cmd+Shift+4. Crude, but it works in situations like this.
posted by dragontail at 3:39 PM on March 24, 2011

Response by poster: Aha! Right you are. The PDF is secured, which is why couldn't get to any of the approaches that seemed to make sense. (For instance, "Delete selected pages" isn't even present with a secured document as far as I can tell.) Live and learn. Now for printing the screen, and maybe printing/scanning full stop (and emailing my editor). Thanks so much, everybody.
posted by finnb at 3:42 PM on March 24, 2011

Possibly the pdf is secured.

You could try something like this:
1. Print to file and make a postscript file
2. Manually edit the postscript file to remove security using a text editor
3. Use ps2pdf to convert postscript back to pdf.

You can do step 2 in a text editor. There is a chunk of text that includes a comment which says something like 'Removing the following 8 lines is illegal due to a violation of the DMCA' and then 8 lines of gibberish. I don't want to get into trouble if this page is widely indexed on Google, but I'll point out that this comment is highly suggestive of what to do...
posted by PercussivePaul at 3:45 PM on March 24, 2011

Perhaps it would be easier to get a high-quality copy if you ask the magazine to export those pages and send them to you?
posted by filthy light thief at 3:56 PM on March 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Download pdf creator. Then print the pdf pages you want to a pdf using the pdfcreator as the printer.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:09 PM on March 24, 2011

I've had some luck doing this with secured PDFs [don't remember the details though] in PDFLab.
posted by advil at 4:14 PM on March 24, 2011

Calibre, with the proper plugins, can remove the DRM on most secured PDFs. Google should turn up what you need.

Also, if regular printing is enabled, you can set up a print-to-file device (postscript or PDF) on another machine (or a VM) and print to it across a network connection as if it were a regular networked printer. In fact, you might be able to do it locally, but that would be trickier. I've done that with some Adobe Digital Editions titles.

But removing the DRM w/Calibre is the best option.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:00 AM on March 25, 2011

Er, Calibre.

That's better.

(Google for the plugins.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:01 AM on March 25, 2011