Big Sur 11.6
Preview 11.0
Redaction is messed up again. In addition to redacted areas, other areas of the document are redacted at random. Having to go back to drawing a black square over redacted content then saving and exporting.
Mac Pro, macOS 10.14
Boot into Safe Mode according to Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.
NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following;
• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)
• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files
Boot into Safe Mode according to Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.
NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following;
• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)
• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files
Log into a basic admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac, and see if the problem persists. This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide.
Also, have you installed or run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac?
I believe you. Perhaps it's the PDFs you are working with. If you select one with the problem, and press Command + i, what version is listed under "More Info:"?
To say that it only works on text is not true for us and does not reflect our experience with it. Most of our scanned documents have redactions in place that continue to display correctly when opened by Preview. We have used the Preview redact in our workflow for some time now, when it isn't broken on and off (there is a way around it when it's not working, but it requires several more mouse clicks, and overwriting the old document to make sure the final PDF can't be un-redacted).
This redact issue is not happening during the act of redacting, it is upon saving the document, the redaction is randomly moved to another place on the document instead of where it was placed, suggesting the issue is a write error upon saving.
Further testing has shown that Adobe Acrobat opens our Preview created redacted file with no issues, further indicating to me that Preview is the problem. If Preview mangles it, Acrobat is showing the mangled file that Preview created.
Now all of that being said, while Acrobat Reader is free, it's sad that we may have to consider using a non-Apple product for our simple redaction needs, and Acrobat Reader is WAY more bloated than Preview.
So testing in our office shows that the problem is STILL occurring on the original Mac Pro, even under safe mode and creating a new user.
Further testing on two completely different Mac mini's with the latest Big Sur update reveals that BOTH of those machines are also experiencing the issue. Random redaction blocks on the saved PDF.
Since this is a business, do you have a current Adobe Acrobat Pro DC version available that you can test its ability to redact correctly? Although there is redaction offered as a menu item in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, it opens a separate window to trial Acrobat Pro DC.
Something is not adding up in this thread, and I do agree that scanned documents into PDF are images, not redactable text as would be found in a non-scanned PDF.
As the OP indicated that some scanned PDF were able to be redacted, I suggested Adobe Acrobat Pro DC which would either do some magic with that scanned text in an image, or bail without redaction. I don't own it, so don't know what Adobe tricks are in it. May be a waste of time.
VikingOSX wrote:
I just scanned a text page at 300 dpi into a PDF using the current version of VueScan Professional. I opened this PDF in Preview and redacted some text (using the cross-hair tool to drag a box around the redacted text string) and then saved the PDF.
My final thought on redaction in Preview. If you look at Preview help, the only mention of the Redact Tool is under "Annotate a PDF in Preview on Mac." It describes redacting selected text. There's nothing about redacting text in an image. The Redact Tool does in fact change to a crosshair over an image and you can drag a translucent box over an area. However, you can't redact a sentence that start in the middle of a line and continue to the next, etc. You can only create a box.
starion wrote:
The "help" description above SAYS text, but the cursor changes to a crosshairs, not an I-beam for text, and again, our experience thus far is that when it works, it redacts anything you rubber band around, text and all.
If you have a PDF document open rather than a scanned image open, the cursor does in fact change to an i-beam for text. Which you can then use to select the text you wish to redact.
If you can find anywhere that Apple stated you can redact text in images I'll take it all back. As I said, I don't know why the cursor changes to a crosshair on an image saved as a PDF. The fact that it doesn't work consistently is just one indication it wasn't intended to work.
Feel free to send Apple feedback about the issue.
I just opened a 180 page PDF and enabled Redaction in the Tools menu. I proceeded to select (redact) content on the first three pages, the 20th page, 30th page, and last page of the PDF — before reselecting Redaction in that menu to disable it. I then saved the PDF and exited Preview. Reopening the same PDF in Preview showed the specific redactions in the precise PDF locations as before it was saved. At no time was there any occurrence of random redaction, because I knew any text selection while redaction was enabled would cause redaction of that selection.
I cannot duplicate your observations with Preview in macOS 11.6, and from my testing perspective, redaction works as it should.
I just scanned a text page at 300 dpi into a PDF using the current version of VueScan Professional. I opened this PDF in Preview and redacted some text (using the cross-hair tool to drag a box around the redacted text string) and then saved the PDF. I then uploaded this to Google Drive and opened it in Google Docs, and the redacted content was missing from the opened PDF. It remained missing when downloading that same content as a Word (.docx) document.
Personally I think the ones that worked were actual PDFs, not scans saved as PDFs. But that's me. 😎
starion wrote:
Okay, then I amend my title...."Redaction of images in Preview not working again...".
That's fine except I don't believe redacting images ever worked or was supposed to work.
Will have to do some more evaluation. We have an entire server full of scanned documents we use ranging from the year 2003 all the way up to present. Had not considered the version that the PDF was created with could impact that.
Redaction in Preview not working again...
