Flattening a PDF document

[yamadaj]

Hello:

We use PDF XChange Editor to create PDFA documents which include images of our professional seals, and a digital signature on the document. We use the digital signature on the document to verify that no changes have been made to the document. We refer to this document as a professional work product (PWP). This is a requirement of the governing body in our jurisdiction.

In some cases, portions of the PWP are used by others, normally a single drawing from a work package, or the original work product is marked up or annotated by others. In these cases, in addition to the PWP, we prepare a digital copy, which is the PWP without the digital signature, and a stamp added to the document indicating that the pdf is not a PWP.

Our process has been to save the PWP without the digital signature, add the disclaimer stamp and flatten the document. We had assumed that flattening the document would prevent modifications to the content of the pdf document. We have realized, however, that after flattening it is still possible to use the "Select Text" to select and image and the image can be deleted. This means that it is possible to remove the disclaimer stamp. Printing as a pdf as an image prevents the stamp from being removed separately, but file size and image quality become an issue.

Is there a workflow to achieve this without the need for printing to pdf as an image?

Mike

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, yamadaj

Yes, there are two alternatives that come to mind immediately for me.

1. If the intent of these documents is exclusively filling, than you could add empty form fields to the document, and use password security options to prevent editing of base content, so that only filling can be done. The advantage to this approach is that it is reversible for anyone who knows the password, should you later need to make a modification to the file. (of course that is also easily worked around by just keeping a separate copy of the file inaccessible to the public on the side)

2. If you like the print as image approach (which can still be edited by anyone who has a basic image editing tool, like MS paint) but otherwise keeps the whole document accessible, than we offer a "rasterize pages" function, which would flatten all content into a single, relatively high resolution image, per page. This would get the effect of flattening the document and then printing to PDF, likely with a higher quality output image, in a single step, instead of 2.

Kind regards,

[yamadaj]

Daniel:

The challenge is with the images (stamps) that we are adding to the file, not the text boxes, so I am not sure how option 1 would work. We also don't want to control how the document is used, as long as the disclaimer remains in the file.

With option 2, we may be able to address the quality, as long as the file size does not become an issue. I will try this approach to see how we make out.

Mike

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, yamadaj

Glad to hear it, let me know if it works out for you. file size can certainly be a bit of an issue, but perhaps it wont be too much for your files.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

I am wondering if the relatively new feature of "New Stamp from Selection" might help in this situation.

The great thing about NSFS is that you are creating a stamp that has all the base content in addition to just the image.

So, the user would have the seal and its underlying text content as a separate and discrete page that does not have to be part of any particular file. Then, having selected that page in the Thumbnails panel create a new stamp using the NSFS function from the context menu.

image.png

Once the stamp is created and named it can be recalled any number of times and applied to the document as required and the stamp's content will now become part of the target document file.

[Radi - Tracker Supp]

Hi PHK,

Thanks for this suggestion.

@yamadaj, please let us know if the above works for you.

Regards,
Radi