Set Wrapping in a Text Imprint

Whether text wraps in an imprint depends initially on whether you created the imprint by clicking or by dragging:

• Clicking: When you click with the Text tool to make an imprint, the text box expands horizontally as you type. The text doesn’t wrap, so you may find yourself typing a long line of text that extends beyond the edge of the page. Similarly, if you paste a lengthy chunk of text into the imprint, the text ends up on a single line.

  You can change this behavior by enabling text wrapping before the text imprint becomes too wide. When text wrapping is enabled, typed text wraps when it reaches the right border of the box. To turn on text wrapping, do the following:

  1. Place the cursor within the imprint, or select the imprint with the Edit tool.

  2. Choose Edit > Wrap Text.

• Dragging: When you drag to create an imprint, the text that you subsequently type wraps automatically to the width of the imprint, and the imprint expands vertically once the text reaches the bottom. This is because the Wrap Text command is enabled for imprints that you create by dragging. If you choose Edit > Wrap Text on such an imprint, Wrap Text is disabled, and the text imprint behaves like one that was created by clicking.

Whether the text wraps or not, you can adjust the size of a text imprint:

1. Choose the Edit tool and click the imprint.

2. Drag a handle at a corner of the imprint to resize and reshape it.

Change the Appearance of Text

A newly created text imprint uses PDFpen’s current default font (described in Fill Out a Text Entry). But the text imprint doesn’t have to remain in that font. In fact, you can mix fonts and text colors within an imprint, and you can set the font, text color, and background color for the imprint as a whole.

By default, imprints are transparent, but you can give them a background color. You can make an imprint’s background color completely opaque, or you can adjust the color’s opacity so that objects behind the imprint can be seen.

Here’s how you change the background color of an imprint:

1. With the Edit tool, click to select the imprint.

2. In the Editing Bar, click the Colors object property pop-up menu, and then click the Background Color icon at the top of the menu.

3. On the menu, click the background color that you want. If the menu does not contain your desired color, click the Other Colors icon at the bottom of the menu, and then use the Colors panel that appears to choose the color you want.

You can format a range of selected text in an imprint or the imprint as a whole. Here are the text formatting settings you can make:

• Text styles and relative sizes: Choose Format > Font and an appropriate submenu item. The submenu items include Bold, Italic, Underline, Smaller, Larger, Kern, Ligature, and Baseline. Note that you can set kerning, ligature, and baseline only for text selections, not for a selected imprint.

• Text alignment: Choose Format > Text, and then choose either Align Left, Center, Justify, or Align Right.

• A specific font (family, typeface, and size): Choose Format > Font > Show Fonts, and then specify a font with the Fonts panel.

• Text color: Choose Format > Show Colors, and then choose a color in the Colors panel.

Here are explanations of the less common formatting terms:

• Kern: The commands on this submenu control the amount of space between individual characters. Here are your choices:

  • Tighten and Loosen: These two commands, respectively, bring the characters closer together or send them farther apart. Place the cursor between two characters to adjust the kerning between them, or select a range of text to adjust the entire selection.

  • Use Default: Select this to use the kerning pairs built into the font. The available kerning pairs vary from font to font.

  • Use None: Choose this to ignore the default kerning pairs and space the characters equally.

  Ordinarily, Use Default is the best choice unless you have specific typography needs.

• Ligature: Some fonts have special characters that are designed to replace specific character combinations. For example, “ff” and “fl” are frequently replaced with ligatures that combine the two characters to make them fit together more attractively. Moreover, some decorative fonts include less common ligatures, such as ligatures for “ct” and “st.” Which character combinations PDFpen replaces by ligatures depends on the ligatures available in the selected text’s fonts.

  Here are the Ligature submenu choices:

  • Use Default: This command substitutes the common ligatures for matching character combinations in the selected text.

  • Use All: This command substitutes any available ligature, common or not, for matching character combinations in a selection.

  • Use None: This command does not do any ligature substitution, and removes ligatures placed by the other two commands.

  Use Default is ordinarily the best choice.

• Baseline: The commands on this submenu affect the amount of vertical spacing between selected characters and the baseline:

  • Superscript and Subscript: These commands raise or lower the selected characters a bit more than half the character height each time you apply them. You might use these when typing formulas.

  • Raise and Lower: These commands raise or lower the selected characters a small amount (about 1 point) from the rest of the characters on the line each time you apply them. Use these commands to make fine adjustments, such as when you correct text on a page.

  • Use Default: This puts the characters back where they belong.

Correct or Remove Items on a Page

It’s easy enough to edit text imprints that you put on the page, but what about the native text or graphic objects that a PDF may already contain? PDFpen provides several tools and commands that give you some mastery over a PDF’s native objects.

Use the Correct Text Command

The Correct Text command gives you the ability to modify the contents of a PDF’s native text objects. Here’s how to use it:

1. With the Select Text tool, select the text you want to change.

2. On the document window toolbar, click Correct Text, or choose Format > Correct Text.

   Depending on the underlying structure of the text object in the PDF, the text you’ve selected and a varying amount of surrounding text appear within a text imprint (Figure 62).

   

3. Type your changes, or use a formatting or editing command, such as Format > Font > Bold, or Edit > Cut.

Your changes take effect. What’s more, you can now move the imprint around, resize it, and do all the other stuff that you can do with the text imprints that you make. Zounds!

Here’s how text correction works: PDFpen analyzes the various PDF text objects that contain your text selection, removes the text from those objects, and puts the text into a similarly sized imprint, matching the original objects’ layout and formatting as best as it can. “As best as it can” is key here—your Mac, for example, might not have the same fonts installed that were used to create the document. Or maybe the text was created from OCR (see Use OCR on Scans and Graphic Files). In those cases, PDFpen has to “fake it” when it makes the imprint.

There are two kinds of “faking it” (these are gross oversimplifications—the processes belong in the realm of You Really Don’t Want to Know):

• The font is not on your Mac: PDFpen examines whatever layout information it can scrounge up about the font and looks for the closest fit it can find on your Mac. The imprint will look similar, but not identical, to the original text. You may have to manipulate the imprint slightly to smooth out the differences.

• The text object is the result of OCR analysis: PDFpen looks for a font that lays out with roughly the same dimensions as the scanned text, but doesn’t try to match the original font’s look in the imprint that it creates (Figure 63). You may have to work hard to make the imprint come close to matching the original’s appearance.

Fortunately, to make the corrected text imprint look as much like the original as possible, you have access to PDFpen’s full range of text formatting capabilities: fonts, colors, sizes, baseline adjustments, kerning adjustments, line spacing, and so on. Learn them, and use them (see The Font Bar and Change the Appearance of Text).

Search and Replace or Redact Text

In addition to the correction capabilities described in Correct or Remove Items on a Page, above, there’s yet another avenue to modifying a PDF’s native contents: the Find feature.

If you’ve been reading this book from front to back, you’ll have read that you can navigate in a PDF with PDFpen’s Find feature (see Navigate with Search Results if you are of the non-linear reading persuasion). Find, though, is only one-third of that feature: it’s really Find, Find and Replace, and Find and Redact.

You can search and replace text like this:

1. Choose Edit > Find > Find and Replace (⌘-Option-F).

   The Replace window opens if it is not already visible, with the cursor positioned in the Find field.

2. Enter some text in the Find field. As you type, matching results appear in the window (Figure 67).

   

3. Enter some text in the Replacement field.

4. Do one of the following:

   • Click a result in the Replace window and then click Replace—no, not the first Replace menu button to the left of the Find field (shown in the figure above), but the second one, between the Replacement field and the Replace All button.

   • Click Replace All.

When you choose Replace, the following actions happen so quickly that you may not notice all the steps. First, the document displays the result that you clicked and selects the matched text. Then, that text is replaced with the contents of the Replacement field, after which the search result that you clicked vanishes from the window. Finally, the window selects the next search entry, if any. The end result is that everything is set up so that you can click Replace again to replace the new currently selected search entry. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the other hand, when you choose Replace All, PDFpen replaces every occurrence of the text that matches the Find field with the Replacement field’s contents. Depending on the size and complexity of the PDF document, this can take a few seconds. When the process finishes, no search results remain in the window, and the document shows the final replacement selected.

Here are some important points to keep in mind when you perform a Search and Replace:

• The search is both case-insensitive and word-boundary insensitive. If, for example, you search for the name Alf and replace it with Sigurd, not only will all occurrences of the name be replaced, but words containing the search term receive the replacement as well: halfway, for example, becomes hSigurdway.

• If the found text is not already in a text imprint (that is, if it is in a PDF text object embedded in the page), the act of replacing it creates a text imprint, just as though you had selected the text and chosen Format > Correct Text (read Use the Correct Text Command). It even works with OCR text in a scanned image.

The steps to perform a Search and Redact operation are similar to those for a Search and Replace:

1. Choose Edit > Find > Find and Redact (⌘-Shift-F).

   The Redact window shows its Find field and includes a menu with redaction options (Figure 68).

   

2. In the Find field, enter text that you’d like to redact.

   PDFpen displays any matches in the lower portion of the window.

3. From the Redaction Style pop-up menu, choose a redaction style. You have the same two choices as for manual redactions: Erase or Block (described in Redact Text, a few pages earlier).

4. Do one of the following:

   • Next to the Redaction Style pop-up menu, click Redact to redact matching results one by one.

   • Click Redact All to redact every occurrence of the search term in the text.

Keep these points in mind when you search and redact:

• Redaction searches are also case and word-boundary insensitive, matching the search string no matter where it occurs in the PDF.

• As with manual redaction operations, the redact operation only redacts text that is in a PDF text object embedded in the page; it does not redact any text that occurs within text imprints. Instead, you can perform a find-and-replace on those occurrences and remove the text from imprints that way (you will have to create the black redaction box by hand if you want to indicate a redaction).

• Find and Redact doesn’t search a PDF’s metadata. (For instructions on modifying a PDF’s metadata, read the bullet item on “Document Information” in The Inspector.)

Insert Line Numbers

In some documents, such as transcripts or legal documents, you may find it useful to number some lines of text for reference. You can select text with the Select Text tool or select a rectangular area containing text with the Select Rectangle tool and then choose Edit > Insert Line Numbers. PDFpen places numbers to the left of the selected text.

Inserted line numbers have the following properties:

• Inserted line numbers always begin with 1.

• They use the default page number font as specified in PDFpen’s preferences (PDFpen > Preferences > Editing).

• Once added, they cannot be edited; to remove them, choose Arrange > Unlock All (⌘-Shift-L), click them with the Edit tool, and then either choose Edit > Delete or press Delete.

Resize and Crop an Image

It’s rare that an image you insert into a PDF is exactly the right size and shape. However, you can resize and crop it painlessly.

To resize an image, do the following:

1. With the Edit tool, click the image.

2. Drag any corner of the image to resize it; hold down Shift as you drag to maintain the image’s proportions.

Cropping an image is not much more difficult:

1. With the Edit tool, click the image and then choose Edit > Crop Image.

   A cropping control panel appears at the bottom of the document window and the image is highlighted with its current dimensions indicated at the top left and bottom left (Figure 69). A cropping rectangle is superimposed on the image.

   

2. Drag within the image boundaries to move the cropping rectangle; drag from any corner or edge to resize it.

   As you move the cropping rectangle, the area outside of the cropping rectangle appears with reduced contrast to highlight the area to be cropped, and the size indicators change to reflect the current dimensions.

3. Do one of the following:

   • Click Crop to crop the image to the highlighted area.

   • Click Crop and Scale to Fit to crop the image but have the cropped image scale to match either the original horizontal or vertical dimension.

If the horizontal dimension of the cropped image is the largest dimension, the image scales to fit the original horizontal dimension; if the vertical dimension is largest, the cropped image scales to fit the original vertical dimension.

Straighten and Adjust an Image

When an inserted image is slightly skewed or is poorly exposed, you can compensate—within limits, of course: PDFpen can work minor wonders, but not miracles:

1. With the Edit tool, click the image and then choose Edit > Deskew and Adjust Image.

   The Deskew and Adjust controls appear at the bottom of the document window (Figure 70).

   

2. Drag the Skew slider left or right to adjust the tilt of the image so it appears straight. The Skew slider is limited to about 20 degrees of adjustment.

3. Drag the Exposure slider left or right to decrease or increase the exposure (brightness) of the image; drag the Contrast slider left or right to decrease or increase the image’s contrast.

4. Click Apply.

You can make more complex image adjustments as well with PDFpen’s Image Edit panel:

1. With the Edit tool, click the image and choose Edit > Adjust Image to open the Image Edit panel, which appears with its Adjust tab selected (see Figure 71).

   

2. Drag the various sliders to adjust the image’s appearance; if things get out of hand, click Reset All and try again.

3. Close the Image Edit panel or click another tab in the panel to make your changes take effect.

You can apply some preset effects with the Effects tab of the Image Edit panel as well, such as blurring the image, applying an “antique” effect, and inverting all of the colors to make a color negative of the image. The Effects tab displays thumbnails showing the various effects so you can preview before you try them. Unlike the controls in the Adjust tab, they don’t take effect when you switch tabs: to apply an effect, select it and then close the Image Edit window.

The Image Edit panel’s Details tab displays statistics about the image. It has no controls that you can adjust.

Resample an Image

When you know that your PDF is going to be reproduced on a black-and-white printer, or if the size of your PDF file is too large because of all the color images in it, you can resample the images to change their color depth and resolution.

To resample an image, click the image with the Edit tool and choose Edit > Resample Image. The Resample controls appear at the bottom of the document window (Figure 72).

Here are the resampling actions you can take:

• Type a different DPI value: Lower values make the image appear blurrier but reduce how much storage the image requires. (Higher values have no visual effect but increase the storage requirements.)

• Change the compression type: Here’s what the choices on the pop-up menu mean:

  • Color JPEG Compression: This is the standard format for color PDF image objects in PDFpen.

  • Grayscale: Grayscale will make your image look like a black-and-white photo.

  • 1-Bit Threshold: Every pixel in the image that is more than 50% gray is made white and all the others black, creating a silhouette effect.

  • 1-Bit Dither: Black-and-white dot patterns simulate levels of gray; the resulting image has less detail and resembles a low-resolution fax.

• Choose a quality percentage: This pop-up menu is available only for Color JPEG and Grayscale compression. Generally, the higher the quality percentage, the more storage space the image requires. Reducing the percentage can make a color or grayscale image look dithered or banded, but saves storage space.

• Click Resample to have your settings take effect; click Resample Entire Document to apply the settings to every image in the document.

• Tip: Unfortunately, the Resample controls don’t give you a preview of how they effect the image, but you can choose Edit > Undo Edit Image if the results are not to your liking.

Make a Transparent Image

PDFpen can select a color or color range in an image and “knock it out” so that any objects behind the image on the page can be seen through the knocked-out holes. This is exactly what you need when you make a signature to use on forms (see Add a Scanned Signature), and it is useful for decorative purposes, such as for creating a border on a page.

You can knock out a color range in an image to make it transparent in three quick steps:

1. With the Edit tool, click the image and choose Edit > Make Transparent Image.

2. In the dialog that slides down, click the eyedropper on the color you want to knock out (Figure 73), and then slide the Tolerance slider until the image shows the desired transparency (Figure 74).

   

   

3. Click Make Transparent.

Colors that fall within the range you specified disappear, and anything behind the image can be seen through the no-longer-visible parts of the picture.

Add a Watermark

You may have some documents that are not in final form or are confidential and need to have their pages marked accordingly, and others that need to display some sort of corporate or organization brand. PDFpen gives you watermarks to satisfy that need. Watermarks are non-editable images that appear behind the other elements on a page, such as the stamp shown in Figure 75.

You can turn either a text imprint or an image into a watermark, and the watermark can appear on all of a PDF’s pages, or a range of pages, or just a selected page.

To create a watermark, do the following:

1. Go to any page where a watermark should appear.

2. Place an image, draw something with PDFpen’s drawing tools, or create a text imprint on that page.

3. Scale and format the item so it is the right size, but don’t worry about orienting it.

4. Select the item you placed if it is not already selected, and then choose Edit > Watermark > Convert to Watermark. The Convert to Watermark dialog appears (Figure 76).

   

5. In the dialog, specify the pages on which you want the watermark to appear.

6. Optionally, use the “Apply to” pop-up menu to put the watermark on every page in the range, or only on odd or even pages.

7. Use the Opacity and the Rotation pop-up menus to choose the watermark’s opacity and the angle at which the selected item should be rotated when it is converted.

8. Click Apply. The watermark appears on the pages you specified.

You can remove a watermark from any page or range of pages:

1. Select the thumbnails of the pages from which you want to remove the watermark in the sidebar (see Navigate with the Sidebar)

2. Choose Edit > Watermark > Remove Watermark from Selected Pages.

Rearrange Pages

The Thumbnails sidebar and your preferred pointing device are the tools you need to rearrange pages in a PDF:

1. Choose View > Thumbnails to show the Thumbnails sidebar if it isn’t already visible.

2. Drag the thumbnail of the page you want to move to its new location in the sidebar.

As you drag the thumbnail, a black line appears to the right of each thumbnail you pass over, indicating that, were you to drop the dragged thumbnail at that moment, the page would be placed at that point.

But suppose you need to move a small group of pages to a new location in a very long PDF. Dragging could become tedious. The following steps explain how to do big moves over long distances in a PDF:

1. In the Thumbnails sidebar, Shift-click or ⌘-click to select the pages you want to move.

2. Choose Edit > Cut.

3. Scroll to the thumbnail of the page after which you want place the pages you’ve cut, click it, and then choose Edit > Paste.

The pages appear following the page you clicked.

Rotate a Page

When a page doesn’t match the orientation of the others in a PDF document, hilarity can ensue when the document is printed. Some programs, like PDFpen, can automatically rotate such pages, but not everyone (yet) uses PDFpen. A recipient of your PDF might have a program that crops the disorientated page to fit when it prints.

To reorient a disorientated page, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the page that is oriented differently from the others. An easy way to find such pages is by viewing them in the Thumbnails sidebar (Figure 77).

   

2. Click the page and then do one of the following:

   • To rotate the page 90 degrees clockwise, choose View > Rotate Right (⌘-R).

   • To rotate the page 90 degrees counterclockwise, choose View > Rotate Left (⌘-Shift-R).

Which direction depends on your needs (and maybe the direction in which your head tilts best), but, in either case, the page is reoriented.

Crop a Page

As common as 8½-by-11 pages are in the United States, not everyone uses pages with those dimensions, and, when it comes to PDFs that are to be printed in a book or pamphlet, the page dimensions can differ significantly.

When you have a PDF that must be cut down to size, PDFpen can help:

1. Navigate to the page you want to crop.

2. In the Editing Bar, click the Select Rectangle tool.

3. On the page, drag to select the proper dimensions.

   As you drag, the current dimensions of the selection rectangle appear along its sides (Figure 78).

   

4. Choose Edit > Crop Page to Selection or click Crop Page to Selection on the Editing Bar.

The page is cropped to the dimensions you chose.