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Changing Font Color and Enlarging Page Sizes in Existing PDF Files


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New to the forum, I have by now purchased, downloaded and installed all three Affinity programs (Win 7), and am hoping that Designer can do what both Acrobat Pro and ABBYY Finereader refuse to do.
 
I have a 200-page PDF document that apparently was created, by someone else, in some sort of automated scanner-to-OCR-to-PDF application.  The original paper document's pages were 4.25" wide by 7.0" high, but throughout the PDF document they vary somewhat in both directions - in some cases larger, in other cases smaller.  The font color throughout is a medium-to-dark gray - notwithstanding that the font color in the original was black.
 
Acrobat Pro XI and DC both are able to correctly crop the over-size pages in both dimensions, but both versions of that program absolutely refuse to increase the under-size values.  ABBYY Finereader, OTOH, can be finagled to generate new pages of the correct size, but in doing so it screws up the line justifications on almost every page.
 
So, in addition to needing to make sure all pages end up the desired 4.25" wide by 7.0" high, I need to change the font color to solid black, throughout the document.  Acrobat can only do this a single page at a time, which would otherwise be barely tolerable; but in making these labor-intensive color changes it often royally screws up the line justifications and general fit of the text blocks on each page.
 
My version of ABBYY Finereader can change font color only one line at a time, which basically makes the program worthless for my purposes.
 
Bluebeam eXtreme can do what I need to do, but its $549 (US) price is way beyond my current budget.
 
So, before I wade deeply into Designer and risk even more "manual hair loss," does it sound as though the program can be made to do what I need to do?  Thank you! MarkT
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Sounds like a bit of a mess, expanding page sizes will push the text to the margins unless text frames are set within the page. I don't think Affinity will do what you want en masse, it may be able to change the text colour though.

I think your only option would be to create a document with the correct sized pages including margins set and paste the content in from the old document and format the content to suit.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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If I were trying that I would probably use Publisher rather than Designer. It is more designed for working with pages, and has functions such as changing the size of a page/spread that may make it easier. Additionally, as you have all 3 programs available, StudioLink in Publisher will allow you to use the Designer or Photo Personas if they provide some editing function that the Publisher Persona doesn't provide directly.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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Thank you, firstdefence and Walt.  I agree that this file is a bit of a "mess," but the saving grace is that there are not all that many pages where Acrobat Pro's font-color change function ruins the line length (this file has justified right margins), and likewise there are not *too* many pages that are undersized. I would like to maintain the PDF file's close replication of the paper document's original page layout and numbering, and completely re-formatting it, front to back in Publisher, seems likely to make that goal difficult or impossible to achieve.

In any case I will experiment with both Designer and Publisher, and report with what I find - if I still have any hair left, that is!    Thanks again, MarkT

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For a 200 page document I would use the ABBYY program to just convert to a text format all the text and import that into Publisher. Then I would format using Paragraph Styles set to closely mimic the layout.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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18 hours ago, MarkT-a1b said:

I have a 200-page PDF document that apparently was created, by someone else, in some sort of automated scanner-to-OCR-to-PDF application

If I understood you well, you have editable PDF document. If so, select the text and import it directly to Publisher - if the text doesn't have footnotes or endnotes - and format the text with paragraph and chacarter styles.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
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5 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

If I understood you well, you have editable PDF document....

Thank you Petar and Old Bruce.  I am not sure that I understand the definition of an "editable PDF document," as you cite above.  The PDF file containing these pages has none of the Security features enabled within Acrobat Pro's File > Properties drop-down menu, and the text can be freely copied, edited, printed, etc.  In my experience, however, text copied from such PDFs, and then pasted into other programs, remains columnar, with each line ending in a Paragraph mark (or a "carriage return," if you're a dinosaur like me); and most if not all special characters and custom formatting are lost.  An example:

The global MAX fleet of about 400 planes was
grounded in March, following two fatal nose-dives
triggered by the misfiring of an automated flight-

control
system called MCAS.

As to exporting the file's text within ABBYY Finereader, I have experimented with each available target-file format - DOC, DOCX, TXT, CSV, RTF, ODT, XLS, XLSX,  etc., and found that approach to be more trouble than it is worth - at least for this particular 200-page document.  Also, this file is structured such that its page numbering within Acrobat (versus its absolute page numbering within the file itself) corresponds to that of the original document, e.g., with  initial un-numbered Title, Notice, blank, Copyright, Contents and Introduction pages; as well as an ending Bibliography and letter-labeled Addendum.  Starting this file from scratch in any program, Affinity or otherwise, would be a daunting proposition.

In any case, just lately life has got in the way of work, but I hope to soon experiment fully with this file within the Affinity workspace.  Stay tuned....   MarkT

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7 hours ago, MarkT-a1b said:

and the text can be freely copied, edited

That is editable PDF document. Just select all the text and Copy/Paste to Publisher.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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  • 2 weeks later...

In a separate message thread, I recommended that Affinity develop a stand-alone PDF editing application, to go along with Designer, Publisher and Photo. Several members commented in response, and one in particular recommended using an existing, (relatively) low-cost program to address my issues with a particularly troublesome PDF file. It turns out that this program does do the job in spades, as detailed in my "closing" comments to the following forum message thread:

Sincere thanks to everyone who replied!   MarkT

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