Copying PDF images into Windows Paint

N

Neil Harrington

I subscribe to two online newspapers, Investor's Business Daily and the
Washington Times. I download both as PDF files, which I view in Adobe Reader
9. Often there are cartoons in each paper that I want to save. With IBD I
can do this easily by clicking on the cartoon, which turns blue, then
right-clicking on it which lets me copy it, and then using Ctrl+V to paste
it into Paint in Windows XP. This works very well.

However, when I try to copy a cartoon in the same way from WashTimes, the
procedure appears to work the same way all the way through, right-clicking
on it again gives the choice to copy it, but when I try to paste it into
Paint all I get is a large black rectangle instead of the cartoon.

Anyone know how I can get this to work with the latter newspaper in PDF form
as it does with the former? I realize this is more likely an Adobe problem
than a Windows problem, but the relevant Adobe newsgroups seem to be
abandoned, I haven't been able to find anything about it on the Adobe site,
and I have no idea where else I could get the information.

Any help much appreciated.
 
P

Paul

Neil said:
I subscribe to two online newspapers, Investor's Business Daily and the
Washington Times. I download both as PDF files, which I view in Adobe Reader
9. Often there are cartoons in each paper that I want to save. With IBD I
can do this easily by clicking on the cartoon, which turns blue, then
right-clicking on it which lets me copy it, and then using Ctrl+V to paste
it into Paint in Windows XP. This works very well.

However, when I try to copy a cartoon in the same way from WashTimes, the
procedure appears to work the same way all the way through, right-clicking
on it again gives the choice to copy it, but when I try to paste it into
Paint all I get is a large black rectangle instead of the cartoon.

Anyone know how I can get this to work with the latter newspaper in PDF form
as it does with the former? I realize this is more likely an Adobe problem
than a Windows problem, but the relevant Adobe newsgroups seem to be
abandoned, I haven't been able to find anything about it on the Adobe site,
and I have no idea where else I could get the information.

Any help much appreciated.

You'd start by checking the security settings of the document. Adobe
supports restricting what you can do with a document, and many
documents created by noobs, are accidentally more restricted than
they probably intended. You'd be surprised how many people are
given a copy of Distiller by their boss, and never bother to even
examine the configuration of their setup.

Before all the additional security features were added, you might
use something like GhostScript, to convert PostScript or PDF to a
picture. Or, even a lowly tool like Photoshop could be used to open
certain kinds of those documents. But with the bumping up of
the release number of the PDF standard, comes the chance that such
methods will be less successful.

I can't imagine an outfit selling newspapers, turning off all the
security features on the product they've sold you. They've probably
set it up, so all you can do is look at it on screen. If they want,
they can stop you from printing it, copying it, etc. So check
the document security properties, to see how restricted it is.

As you can see in this article, a company called Elcomsoft, makes
a fine tool for making fools of these people.

http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=1540&nl

Not all the busting methods are easy. For example, in the feature
table here, "brute force" is an item in the table, which means
it may take significant computing effort to defeat the chosen
protection method. Most people probably wouldn't waste the money
on this, but if you're determined to do what you want with the product,
then go for it.

http://www.elcomsoft.com/apdfpr.html

You could also attempt to take a screen snapshot of the page while
it is displayed on your screen. I don't know whether Acrobat Reader
is tight fisted enough, to prevent someone from taking a snapshot, so
you can try that. Again, given enough effort, you can probably find
a software product for attacking it from that perspective.

Good luck,
Paul
 
P

Paul

Student said:
Have you tried the Camera icon?

S

I tried Acrobat Reader 9.2 in a Virtual Machine for testing,
and if the document security setting is locked for copying,
the snapshot tool is grayed out. On a second document, one
where copying was allowed, you could copy a picture with the
snapshot tool (hidden in one of the menu items). That was with 9.2.

Using the Windows Print Screen key, I was able to capture a picture
of the desktop, complete with the copy protected Acrobat document.
The resolution of the snapshot isn't too good that way. But with some
work, you could zoom in, and copy the image in pieces, and then
splice the pieces together.

My virtual machine has a copy of Win2K in it, so that wasn't
tested in WinXP.

Paul
 
V

VanguardLH

Neil said:
I subscribe to two online newspapers, Investor's Business Daily and the
Washington Times. I download both as PDF files, which I view in Adobe Reader
9. Often there are cartoons in each paper that I want to save. With IBD I
can do this easily by clicking on the cartoon, which turns blue, then
right-clicking on it which lets me copy it, and then using Ctrl+V to paste
it into Paint in Windows XP. This works very well.

However, when I try to copy a cartoon in the same way from WashTimes, the
procedure appears to work the same way all the way through, right-clicking
on it again gives the choice to copy it, but when I try to paste it into
Paint all I get is a large black rectangle instead of the cartoon.

Anyone know how I can get this to work with the latter newspaper in PDF form
as it does with the former? I realize this is more likely an Adobe problem
than a Windows problem, but the relevant Adobe newsgroups seem to be
abandoned, I haven't been able to find anything about it on the Adobe site,
and I have no idea where else I could get the information.

Any help much appreciated.

There are many screen capture utilities, some built into a clipboard
manager (so you get two substantive utilities: a screen capturer and a
means of saving more than just the last clip and even organize them into
collections for reuse). I use ClipMate (not free) which lets me capture
a section of the screen or select a window to capture its content.
ClipMagic (free) is good and has screen capture functions. There are
utilities specifically just for screen capture, like SnagIt, except
Clip(Mate|Magic) already have sufficient abilities for my needs. With
screen captures, you'll need to size the image to whatever you will be
saving in the capture. In Adobe Reader, you can zoom in and reposition
the page so the image is as large as possible before capturing the
screen (with the select tool so you mark just the image to capture
rather than the whole screen or everything within the app's window).
 
B

Bill Sharpe

VanguardLH said:
There are many screen capture utilities, some built into a clipboard
manager (so you get two substantive utilities: a screen capturer and a
means of saving more than just the last clip and even organize them into
collections for reuse). I use ClipMate (not free) which lets me capture
a section of the screen or select a window to capture its content.
ClipMagic (free) is good and has screen capture functions. There are
utilities specifically just for screen capture, like SnagIt, except
Clip(Mate|Magic) already have sufficient abilities for my needs. With
screen captures, you'll need to size the image to whatever you will be
saving in the capture. In Adobe Reader, you can zoom in and reposition
the page so the image is as large as possible before capturing the
screen (with the select tool so you mark just the image to capture
rather than the whole screen or everything within the app's window).

Another trick to improve your screen capture is to temporarily rotate
your monitor display by 90 degrees. Control+Right Arrow or Control+Left
Arrow generally works with most video drivers. A full page takes up much
more real estate in this mode and will give you a better resolution in
the resulting screen capture. Using a screen capture program that
includes keystroke alternatives to mouse clicks also helps when you're
in this rotated mode.

Bill

Bill
 
P

Paul Randall

Neil Harrington said:
I subscribe to two online newspapers, Investor's Business Daily and the
Washington Times. I download both as PDF files, which I view in Adobe
Reader 9. Often there are cartoons in each paper that I want to save. With
IBD I can do this easily by clicking on the cartoon, which turns blue, then
right-clicking on it which lets me copy it, and then using Ctrl+V to paste
it into Paint in Windows XP. This works very well.

However, when I try to copy a cartoon in the same way from WashTimes, the
procedure appears to work the same way all the way through, right-clicking
on it again gives the choice to copy it, but when I try to paste it into
Paint all I get is a large black rectangle instead of the cartoon.

Anyone know how I can get this to work with the latter newspaper in PDF
form as it does with the former? I realize this is more likely an Adobe
problem than a Windows problem, but the relevant Adobe newsgroups seem to
be abandoned, I haven't been able to find anything about it on the Adobe
site, and I have no idea where else I could get the information.

Any help much appreciated.

If you decide to try some of the screen capture methods that others
suggested, and you want to capture an area larger than your screen size, it
may be possible. On my laptop with a native screen size of 1024 by 768
pixels, I can right click an empty spot on the desktop, choose properties,
and in the resulting display properties window, choose the settings tab.
Here I can increase the screen resolution setting to twice the native screen
resolution, and I can then do screen captures of 2048 by1536 pixel areas.

-Paul Randall
 
N

Neil Harrington

Student said:
Have you tried the Camera icon?

S

Thanks! I wasn't even aware of that tool.

Trying it just now I find it copies the whole page in Paint, not just the
cartoon I'm trying to select, that's something I can deal with.

Apparently part of my problem too was that I was doing this in Reader from
within Internet Explorer, which doesn't make all those tools available.
Opening the PDF file separately does make them available.

Thanks again!

Neil
 
N

Neil Harrington

VanguardLH said:
There are many screen capture utilities, some built into a clipboard
manager (so you get two substantive utilities: a screen capturer and a
means of saving more than just the last clip and even organize them into
collections for reuse). I use ClipMate (not free) which lets me capture
a section of the screen or select a window to capture its content.
ClipMagic (free) is good and has screen capture functions. There are
utilities specifically just for screen capture, like SnagIt, except
Clip(Mate|Magic) already have sufficient abilities for my needs. With
screen captures, you'll need to size the image to whatever you will be
saving in the capture. In Adobe Reader, you can zoom in and reposition
the page so the image is as large as possible before capturing the
screen (with the select tool so you mark just the image to capture
rather than the whole screen or everything within the app's window).

I've made a note of all that too.

Thanks very much to everyone who has helped me.

Neil
 
N

Neil Harrington

Paul Randall said:
If you decide to try some of the screen capture methods that others
suggested, and you want to capture an area larger than your screen size,
it may be possible. On my laptop with a native screen size of 1024 by 768
pixels, I can right click an empty spot on the desktop, choose properties,
and in the resulting display properties window, choose the settings tab.
Here I can increase the screen resolution setting to twice the native
screen resolution, and I can then do screen captures of 2048 by1536 pixel
areas.

-Paul Randall

Thanks, Paul. Actually it's just smaller areas that I want to copy, but
I've made a note of your tip also.

Neil
 
P

Paul Randall

Neil Harrington said:
Thanks, Paul. Actually it's just smaller areas that I want to copy, but
I've made a note of your tip also.

Neil

You are welcome.
I especially like to use this technique to capture and print things like
maps.google.com satellite view for printing out a detailed view of an area I
might want to hike, like around coast campground, california. Stupid google
only gives you a map as big as fits the width of the IE window which maxes
out at the width of the screen, so doubling the screen size give a much more
detailed map which can be scaled to hold all of my area of interest and can
be copied to mspaint and then selected areas can be printed on one page.

-Paul Randall
 

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