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Altering Scanned PDF

I am trying to emphasize certain sections of a scanned PDF document in Preview. I assume that it's impossible to highlight, so I tried using the toolbar to choose a rectangular shape, line thickness and color in order to draw a box around the paragraph. I can see the rectangular box on my screen (not in color), but each time I hit "enter" it disappears. Suggestions PLEASE!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.1

Posted on Jan 16, 2021 1:18 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 16, 2021 5:40 PM

You need to choose a blank (no color) inside of the shape you will draw.


Here is the screenshot of my markup toolbar:



The left circle is the color of the outline of the shape you choose


The right circle shows the choices for the inside of that shape from "no color" - a line through it - to whatever color you choose.



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Question marked as Best reply

Jan 16, 2021 5:40 PM in response to Pattiedawn

You need to choose a blank (no color) inside of the shape you will draw.


Here is the screenshot of my markup toolbar:



The left circle is the color of the outline of the shape you choose


The right circle shows the choices for the inside of that shape from "no color" - a line through it - to whatever color you choose.



Jan 16, 2021 1:55 PM in response to Pattiedawn

I'm assuming you mean you used a scanner to get a document onto your computer, and saved the scan in PDF format.


If that's correct, all you did was enclose a raster image (TIFF, JPEG, etc.) in a PDF wrapper. It's still an image and you can't select text as if it were a Word, TextEdit or other such document.


There's no other file type you can select with a scanner that will produce anything editable. At least, not in the way you want. A scan will always be a raster image.


The only way you can edit a scan of text is after scanning the document, you run it through OCR software (Optical Character Recognition). Such software attempts to figure out what letter the pixels are forming and turns it in to text you can export. From there, you can edit the exported text.

Jan 16, 2021 4:37 PM in response to babowa

Nope, that didn’t work. I tried saving it with the cursor inside the text box and from outside. When I saved it with the cursor inside, it didn’t disappear, but it also didn’t save. When I tried it with the cursor outside, the text box just disappeared. The really odd thing is that the border is still black even though I chose red.

Jan 16, 2021 5:02 PM in response to Pattiedawn

I am choosing "Rectangular Selection", then the thinnest line for "Shape Style", and the color "Red". That allows me create what I'm referring to as a Textbox (the same way that I do a screenshot by using the Command-4 keys. When I initially click onto the PDF, it shows no taskbar at all - I have to get it from the View option in Preview. However, the taskbar looks nothing like the taskbars I've seen on the You Tube videos, i.e., there is no icon that looks like a pen scribbling, etc.

Altering Scanned PDF

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