Redacting a pdf?

General system Applications
1

I.E. black box or similar over names and/or dates or any other PII for some PDF’s to be used as learning tools.

I’m not savvy. The old graphic prepressman in me has imported pdfs into scribus, put layered picture boxes over stuff, then re-export. That’s such a cumbersome method. And I got a dozen pdfs.

The Actual Question: if speed and accuracy were your only criteria for redacting/editing a pdf, what tool would you use (and suggest I use) for this project?

thanks for any ideas. DDG tonight is TMI and not as efficient as you all

2

There are many ways to redact a PDF, but there isn’t a great tool that will do this as effectively as Acrobat will. I’m working on one tbh, but its not ready to share yet.

Most people will do some combination of rasterize the pdf, highlight it, convert it to a PDF. Like convert to an image, edit the image, print as PDF. Alternatively you can also use a tool like this which may automate a part of the process https://dangerzone.rocks/#downloads (Note: I have not tried this with this specific tool)

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3

that’s what i was afraid of. I used to do all this in Distiller quicky before a RIP (raster image processing) in Olden Mac Days. I don’t let any adobe on my Endeavour/Linux.

that they are still king of the hill–with this stuff–after 25 years is depressing somewhat.

yeah taking a pdf to a rasterize state/extension (save as), fixing it in Gimp or name-a-program then re-exporting as pdf is what I’m doing now in Scribus. I agree its a purer process rasterizing a pdf/jepg etc then “re-animating it” to its original state.

thanks for the insightful response

4

Well they did make the PDF format so they could basically maintain ownership of it. Its sad that this was their business plan.

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yeah. sad to me because FOSS hasn’t found a way to move beyond pdf reader that may or may not accommodate contractual (or other) fill-in fields.

I’ll leave it at that. Thought maybe foss had built a bridge to quick edit my now. Thanks again.

6

Open the PDF in LibreOffice Draw application. Then you have two options

First Option use Tools > Redact > Rectangle. Then export it from the same menu option, i.e. Tools > Redact > Export Redacted PDF.

Second option use the Line Colour to hide the items. This works for PDF which consist only of images, i.e. where the text is an image and not text. Then select the option File > Export as PDF.

Remember DO NOT SAVE THE REDACTED PDF. EXPORT IT INTO A ANOTHER PDF AFTER REDACTING IT.

Verify the result using xpdf or mupdf or Firefox inbuilt pdf viewer or Okular.

If this works buy me some blue pills :woozy_face:. Need sleep.

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7

There are two versions of “Master PDF editor” in the AUR:

Older version is free but limited in capabilities, newer version is more powerful, but some features in free version will add a watermark.

There is also “PDF Studio” from Qoppa. It is much more capable, but free version always adds a watermark:

EDIT.
One more tool in AUR is PDF4QT. It is open source but I think it is less capable:

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8

Black box overlay can be done by Okular and maybe by some other common pdf viewers that support pdf annotations. If you print the file, that’s OK. But in the pdf viewer the text under the black box can still be selected and copied.

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thank you. I’m allergic to k-packages (bad luck in the past w/cinnamon and budgie) but I wonder what other pdf annotators there are. evince sure isn’t.

PDF Studio I will try today

10

Don’t know if anything here will do the trick…

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11

You should revisit KDE Plasma on EOS. It rocks. :sign_of_the_horns:

And yes what Okular and Evince do is not redacting. The underyling text can still be copied and pasted, provided it is in text and not image format.

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12

KDE is about the only OS I ever dabbled into with little enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliantly put together and visually stunning.

  1. I really don’t need an overwhelmingly large amount of granular options. If I wanted to create a personal artistic canvas I’d really put the work into a WM/TM. Tried one before, it’s a lot of upkeep.

  2. I don’t like anything about kwallet and why is has to be part of every function of everything KDE does and this is very windows-like behavior to me and causes me distrust. It seems like it has to embed itself everywhere but I am not buying the reasons.

once I can get over this stuff…:wink:

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Kwallet is not installed on EndeavourOS KDE as far as I’m aware. Quite a few installs the past couple years, Kwallet has never been installed.

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Well Kwallet is installed, but without the kwallet manager.

aam                       : kwallet
Versie                     : 6.18.0-1
Beschrijving               : Secure and unified container for user passwords
Architectuur               : x86_64
URL                        : https://community.kde.org/Frameworks
Licenties                  : LGPL-2.0-only  LGPL-3.0-only
Groepen                    : kf6
Voorziet                   : org.freedesktop.secrets
Is afhankelijk van         : gcc-libs  glib2  glibc  gpgmepp  kcolorscheme  kconfig  kcoreaddons  kcrash  kdbusaddons  ki18n
                             knotifications  kwidgetsaddons  kwindowsystem  libgcrypt  libsecret  qca-qt6  qt6-base
Optionele afhankelijkheden : kwalletmanager: Configuration GUI
Vereist door               : kaccounts-integration  kio  krusader  kwallet-pam  okular  plasma-nm  plasma-workspace
                             signon-kwallet-extension
Optioneel voor             : falkon  git  libsecret  vivaldi-snapshot
Conflicteert met           : Geen
Vervangt                   : Geen
Geïnstalleerde grootte     : 2,35 MiB
Packager                   : Tomaz Canabrava <tcanabrava@archlinux.org>
Creatiedatum               : za 13 sep 2025 15:24:20 CEST
Installatiedatum           : za 13 sep 2025 17:58:54 CEST
Installatiereden           : Geïnstalleerd als afhankelijkheid voor ander pakket
Installatiescript          : Nee
Gevalideerd door           : Handtekening
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15

kwallet is the dependency of so many things Plasma that it is almost impossible that it doesn’t get installed. Maybe it is not explicitly specified in the EOS’ Plasma package list because it doesn’t need to.

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16

Maybe so. I’ve never seen it pop up, never had a prompt to use it in over 2 years on half a dozen installs.

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17

If you use auto login there is a big chance it will pop up when you install and startup e.g. Vivaldi, but strangely enough that doesn’t always happen :person_shrugging: .