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Image layer problems!!! Please help!!!

Forum Index > Printing & Prepress > Image layer problems!!! Please help!!!
2010-12-21 10:04:31
clemd973
Registered: Dec 20 2010
Posts: 6

Hi, I am a bookscanner and scan pages with digital cameras on my book scanner; I then process the pages in Adobe Lightroom 3 and Scan Tailor, followed by compilation of the images in Acrobat to produce a .pdf eBook. Recently I was able to figure out how to use "Preflight" to separate text and images into layers, and this does exactly what I needed, which was to remove the background image and leave only the text visible on a white background as I toggled "off" the "image" layer. So here's my problem:
 
Most of the books I scan are only text, but some have images that I want to keep visible in the final eBook. However, I never want to have visible the "background" or the actual paper book page from the original scanned file. The problem is that when I toggle-off the image layer to remove the unsightly background to produce a clean white background, the other "images" become invisible as well. In the book I'm currently working on, the part I want to keep is musical score selection, which consists of text, vector images, and regular image layers (background and musical notes). I wonder if there is a selection tool or something that would allow me to select the musical score as something I want to keep and put it on a totally separate layer AND still be able to remove the unsightly/gray background from the musical score/that new layer?
 
"Layers" has allowed me to attain about 90% success with this eBook project and others like it, but finding the answer to this particular question would allow me to attain 100% of my desired result as some books do contain multiple/separate images. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
 
If needed, I can email you a sample page to better understand my dilemma.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 10.0, Macintosh
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2010-12-23 09:56:56
#1
mattbeals
Registered: May 10 2007
Posts: 40
Basically what you need to do is to create a mask to hide the undesired areas. The only way to do that is to use Enfocus PitStop Professional and draw the mask (as an ellipse, rectangle or free form path). Then you have to select the image and new mask and tell PitStop to "create mask". It's not hard technically, it's just difficult to do well depending on the shape of the area. There is also the added difficulty of having multiple images in different regions that need to be masked. It can all be done it's just not neat and clean or something that can be automated.
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2010-12-28 06:43:51
#2
clemd973
Registered: Dec 20 2010
Posts: 6
OK, but I don't have Enfocus PitStop. As I continued to tinker with this issue, I found that after running OCR, I can use Edit>Preflight to separate the pages into different layers (image layer containing the background, text layer, and vector object layer). Upon hiding the "image" layer, the background goes away, as described above in what I originally desired. That being said, the the layers are only "hidden" when using Acrobat. If you import the PDF into a book reader or PDF reader, which is the end goal, the image layer is still visible.Now the question changes to, "How do I delete the image layer using Acrobat X?"

Thanks.
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2010-12-28 07:16:52
#3
clemd973
Registered: Dec 20 2010
Posts: 6
Well, that was easy. I just solved my second question. Here is the situation: I scanned a book, processed the images, and imported them into Acrobat X. At that point, I used Edit>Preflight to separate the pages into layers: image layer, text layer, and vector object layer. In the layer command, I hid the image layer, which effectively hides the background (actual paper page from book), and the vector object layers. Now, when the PDF was saved and viewed in another program - not Acrobat - the layers were still visible. So I wanted to find out how to "delete" a layer. I was not able to find a "delete layer" command, but what I did find out was that if you hide the layers you don't want to be visible (perhaps I went overboard because under properties in each of the unwanted layers, I made the default "not visible", and I selected "never visible," "never print," and "never export," and then locked-out the layer) and then select "Flatten Layers" from the layer command box, the layers flatten on each other, and the layers that were hidden become, for all practical purposes, "deleted". Hope this helps people.
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2010-12-29 20:11:07
#4
mattbeals
Registered: May 10 2007
Posts: 40
You can use the fixups in Acrobat Pro to put specific objects on a layer, as you have done, and then use another fixup to hide the undesired objects. And then one more to flatten layers are remove hidden layers.
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