Is there any way to remove background images from a PDF file?

May 25, 2004 12:41 PM

Is there any way to remove background images from a PDF file? I downloaded some documentation for the Mambo Server, and it has an incredibly annoying, large, pixelated orangeish logo as a BG on every page, which doesn't help readability one bit. Have tried inserting a new white background in Acrobat, but it ends up behind the original one.
posted by signal to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

see if you can open it in illustrator. if it's not protected, you should be able to isolate the background and remove it. You may have to ungroup and remove clipping masks, but eventually you will be able to select the image.
posted by grimley at 1:40 PM on May 25, 2004

Response by poster: Thing is, grimley, they're multipage PDF files, and Illustrator can only handle one page at the time (I think)).
posted by signal at 1:48 PM on May 25, 2004

Can't answer the PDF question. I downloaded the RTF from MOSForge and removed the watermark using Word. View the header and then delete the graphic.
posted by cairnish at 1:50 PM on May 25, 2004

i know it sounds like a pain, but you could open each page as an illustrator file, delete the logo, save it as a pdf, and then reassemble the file in acrobat. as far as I know not even acrobat 6 pro can delete portions of a pdf. hope this helps.
posted by grimley at 1:52 PM on May 25, 2004

RTF version.
posted by cairnish at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2004

Response by poster: cairnish: thanks, that makes more sense than mucking about with the PDF.
posted by signal at 2:27 PM on May 25, 2004

I have deleted images from PDFs before using Acrobat (NB Acrobat, not Acrobat Reader) - just grab the image using the touch up image tool and hit delete. Not sure if it works the same with a watermark but it should do.
posted by skylar at 1:06 AM on May 26, 2004