travisdahl71 Author

Level 1

8 points

Instant Alpha is not available on some PDFs. Why?

I have several PDFs that I want to remove the background on. Some just with images. Some with images and text. I've run into this a few times before and cannot figure out why the Smart Lasso and Instant Alpha tools are not available on certain documents. It works sometimes and sometimes does not. The background is plain white on all and the images / text are solid colours. I'm running Mojave 10.14.3 and Preview 10.1.

Any suggestions?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Feb 25, 2019 12:58 PM

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3 replies

travisdahl71 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 25, 2019 1:17 PM in response to leroydouglas

You're absolutely right. You cannot IA with a PDF. Export the PDF in Preview to a JPG or PNG, then the tools are available.

Thanks Leeroy!

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Level 10

199,416 points

Feb 25, 2019 1:02 PM in response to travisdahl71

It does not surprise me instant Alpha would not be available on a PDF.

It may well depend on how that PDF was authored. You may not have privileges to make a change like that.

You can always try with a different PDF editor, for ex PDFpen.app

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Level 10

199,416 points

Feb 25, 2019 1:33 PM in response to travisdahl71

You're absolutely right. You cannot IA with a PDF. Export the PDF in Preview to a JPG or PNG, then the tools are available.

Good computing travisdahl71 !

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Instant Alpha is not available on some PDFs. Why?

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