These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Touch Up Object Tool - why wont it select my object ?

WTF
Registered: Dec 3 2009
Posts: 11
Answered

I wanted to move a paragraph of scanned text further down the page however when I use "touch up object tool" it selects only the whole page, so I tried OCR first and found that it now finds many boxes on the page, however when I move the selected box it appears to have a ghost version of the text, the original text remains behind and only a transparent invisible ghost version of the text moves, when I click the properties of the "ghost text" I can see its font is selected as white, which is why its transparent, so when I change it to black it appears on the page as secondary text overlaping my original. What is going on ?

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro Extended 9.2, Windows
Dimitri
Expert
Registered: Nov 1 2005
Posts: 1389
Hi WTF,

In a scanned document each page is a single image and you cannot edit images in Acrobat. When you OCR a PDF, Acrobat identifies the characters inside the image and overlays invisible text over the top of the image. This is what you are seeing (ghost text). Since the page is a single image you cannot move a paragraph.

On top of that, the Touch Up Object tool is for making minor changes to a PDF, not for large editing jobs. I would say moving whole paragraphs falls under the large editing category. It is a time saver to be able to make a few minor changes to a PDF without going back to the source file, which is why Adobe added this feature to Acrobat. But Acrobat was never intended to be used as a full blown file editing tool. Because scanning produces images you really would be better off scanning the pages into an image editing program like PhotoShop. You are beyond the limits of Acrobat's editing capabilities- which were never that comprehensive to begin with.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.pdfscripting.com
www.windjack.com
WTF
Registered: Dec 3 2009
Posts: 11
Thank you for explaining it clearly.