Watermark work arounds

[pfarber]

I really debated weather or not to share this little bit of info. Its a gray area that can be used for great good or evil. But since some TMs really cannot be printed without getting rid of the watermark I'll share this in hopes that more good than bad comes from it.

If you can follow along, fine. If you can't. Fine. I will offer no assistance other than what I am posting below.

Watermarks can be done in several ways. Some are applied by the PDF software when created (creating a sort of layer) and others physically alter the image with the watermark. This will work for the former, not the latter. Also, PDF security can prevent printing, or only allow low res printing. There is no real way around that (well, sort of).. so you must be able to at least print the PDF file.

The easy way: Print the entire PDF file to a PS or EPS file. Then convert it back into a PDF by loading it into an application that can read EPS/PS files. That should remove the watermark.

If the above still produces a watermark, you have to load the PDF file into an editor and look for the watermark image and delete it. There are XML like tags that will start and end the watermark image. This is pretty advanced stuff, but I've used it to remove the watermarks from photos because they used such an old version of Adobe that it breaks posting them. If II removed a watermark to post on this site I still cite the source as that's what the watermark is really there to do.

Nothing I have stated is illegal. The dirty little secret is that all Army TMs/photos/reports are public domain. Scanning them does not convey any copyright to the person who scanned it or put it in digital form. The media its on is irrelevant.

I will watermark most of the stuff I put in the Technical Publications section of this site because I want people to know where they came from, so CCKW owners know that there is a place that has a forum to talk about these workhorses. My watermarks will alter the image (so simply printing them out will not remove it) but are unobtrusive (ie in the corners/top/bottom).