2 Replies Latest reply: Nov 3, 2013 8:08 PM by JayNewWeb RSS

    Adding "black" lines and text to image scans

    JayNewWeb Community Member

      I'm currently running Acrobat 9 Pro, under XP.

       

      I scan documents as black-and-white PDF image files. They usually contain handwritten text. OCR is not applicable (at least, as far as I know there's little if anything that currently exists that's realistic for doing OCR on hand-written text).

       

      I just leave them as images of the handwritten text, and that's generally okay for my purposes.

       

      However, I often want to go in and "edit" a little bit of that handwritten text -- just a few words here and there -- either by sometimes crossing things out or sometimes deleting them (or whiting them out, or covering them with a white box), and adding a text box with new typed text either over or between existing handwritten text..

       

      I know how to do most of that (well, I could use a few pointers on deleting or whiting out handwritten words), but I don't know how to make it all "black" so it tends to blend better with the color of the scan itself. Currently, lines I draw and text I enter appear red. How do I make them appear black so it blends better?

       

      Can I do that?

       

      Or do I need to upgrade to be able to do that?

       

      Thanks.

        • 1. Re: Adding "black" lines and text to image scans
          Bill@VT CommunityMVP

          To black out parts of text, the only practical way is to use the redact tool. I am not sure that the background color can be selected. The rectangular box could be used, but it is simply markup that goes in front of the PDF document and probably would not help with adding text that you want to do.

          • 2. Re: Adding "black" lines and text to image scans
            JayNewWeb Community Member

            I'm not sure we're on the same page. I already have no probelm drawing a white box to cover existing text (remember, this is all "images" since I'm just scanning in handwritten pages and not using OCR on them at all) and I can already draw a text frame to enter text into, just as I can already draw lines to cross things out that I don't want to just cover with a white box. I'm just looking for a way to make that text and those lines black instead of red (and for anything else that might make the process more elegant).

             

            Thanks.