Edit to existing PDF file: Can I ask a favour?

[Rocket Rab]

I wonder, does anyone have the software (Acrobat Writer?) to edit a PDF file, and if so, would s/he be kind enough to make two small changes (an address and a number) to two existing files? I'm sorry, I've never used anything other than Acrobat Reader, so I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking here in terms of the work involved? Maybe hours, in which case, name your price! (and I'll decide if I can pay it! )

[Normandy Cow]

Jenny, email it to me and I'll have a go as I have Acrobat Writer software.
But if you have the original word document, that would be even easier as I can amend it in Word then save it as a pdf.

My price? How about a Pineau Blanc on the quayside at St Martin????

[Rocket Rab]

How about two, three, four...!!

Coming up, and thanks for your kind offer NC!

[Normandy Cow]

Haven't received it yet, but we have been having major problems with our email system. Have you sent it yet?

[Rocket Rab]

...mere seconds after you offered, NC!

[AndyLucia]

For future reference I can help out here as well, if anybody needs a little .pdf editing.

[Rocket Rab]

Hi Andy, and many thanks - that's good to know. NC did a great job on the editing, which turned out a bit more complicated than we both thought (of curse !). So a big thank you to her, too.

[Normandy Cow]

Andy, you may be able to help out here in the future. Although I have Acrobat 6.0, I wasn't able to edit the text using the normal pdf text editting tool, because it was an "embedded font" (Gill) which I don't have.

So I had to do some lateral thinking. I saved the pdf as a bitmap file and imported it into photoshop. I then erased the old text and entered the new text using the photoshop text tool (but not using Gill font as I don't have it). Finally I saved the photoshop-enhanced bitmap file as a pdf file.

It worked, but was not really the most elegant way of doing it (and of course, the font doesn't quite match!), but I think RR was happy enough with the result!

[Rocket Rab]

I think RR was happy enough with the result!

More than!! Thanks a mill, NC

[AndyLucia]

NC, some versions of Photoshop will actually open a .pdf file (they are both Adobe products after all), so you may have been able to edit it directly; if you have Illustrator that will also open .pdf files. The advantage of doing it that way is that, if you don't have the font the document was prepared in, it will substitute another font in it's place which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

[Normandy Cow]

Oohh Errr Andy, thanks for the tip - I didn't even think to try and open it directly in Photoshop!!!!

However, I just tried it now, and although yes it was possible to open a pdf, it then put it through the "generic pdf parser", and the resulting file was not a very good copy of the original. I suspect that this is because I am using Photoshop 6.0 which must be at least 5 or 6 years old by now. Presumably later versions of Photoshop will work better. So in the meantime, if I ever have to do this again, I think I'll still have to go via converting to bitmap first - not a huge problem, just one extra step.