[pcbaaya]

I have been sent a PDF showing a page from a Japanese catalog and asked to translate it, but the lettering is in white and the background black, and the letters are so tiny that I can't read it when I print it out. My photo software doesn't support PDF.
Is there any way to enlarge and print out, say, half of the original page so it fills the page it is printed on? And, at the very least, is there some trick by which I can print the page in black on white, instead of white on black? Grateful for any help!

[md2lgyk]

I tinkered with Acrobat Reader 6 for a bit and couldn't come up with a way to do what you want. Of course, somebody more expert probably will LOL.

[slipe]

Next to the text select tool is a “snapshot” tool. Select it and drag a box around the text. If you reach the bottom of the screen it will scroll. Release the mouse button and it will put the image on the clipboard. Ctrl+V in your photo editor and you can invert it there. In Photoshop you have to create a file to paste it in – don’t know about others but you can almost always paste into an image editor.

[gotrootdude]

I'd use a print to image printer driver, then swap the colors using paint shop pro..

[slipe]

There is a selection in the printer properties to fit the file to the page if the manual is small. It will print larger that way but still with white on black. You can also upsize the print size in an image editor after you invert it.

Originally posted by gotrootdude:
I'd use a print to image printer driver, then swap the colors using paint shop pro..

Have you actually done that? The Acrobat print as image just sends it to the printer as an image of the page rather than in normal Acrobat formatting. And printing to file doesn’t give a JPG, TIF, BMP or any file I can open in the image editor – even with “Print as image” checked. Maybe it could be handled through Post Script, but most of us don’t have those any more I don’t think. How about taking a PDF into PSP that way and giving the steps. It looks like a handy process if I could figure out how to do it.

[gotrootdude]

I've got a freeware image printer driver somewhere on my drive at home.. But there are shareware ones that work fine.. They aren't that expensive.. There are times when I find the need to use such a program.

http://www.voodoofiles.com/9152

[pcbaaya]

Thank all of you very much. I used the camera icon to put the page on the clipboard, but then couldn't open it in either my photo editing software (which, alas, is not Paintshop Pro) or MS Paint. Who can say why? Then I tried right clicking on the page itself and choosing "select all", after which, surprisingly, CTRL+V did put it into MS Paint. A little looking around brought up the command to invert colors, so I finally got it changed to black on white! From that image, I enlarged the page enough to be able to make out the characters, even though it meant printing it out in several pieces and taping them together. I hope I never again get such an illegible page to translate, but if I do, now I know what to do about it, and I am very grateful.

[slipe]

pcbaaya You really should download Irfanview. www.irfanview.com It is an excellent freeware with great capabilities. I usually use Photoshop, but I just took a snapshot in Acrobat Reader and could paste it into Irfanview both with Ctrl+V and Edit>Paste.

The advantage is that you can take the snapshot of just the text and expand it as you see fit without margins, illustrations etc. You have to drag the box around what you want when you use the snapshot in Acrobat Reader as it doesn’t take a snapshot of anything but what you include in the box – I think the reason you can’t paste might be you didn’t drag a selection. The Irfanview print properties gives a lot of options as well.

gotrootdude I didn’t know they existed. Looks like it would give better quality for captures for some sources than a screen capture. If I could find a good free one I might keep it in reserve, but I wouldn’t use it enough personally to justify paying.

[pcbaaya]

Slipe,
Irfanview sounds good. It would make sense just to take the text. I'll try it, and thanks for telling me about it. I have a feeling that more translation work of this nature is going to come my way, and I hate spending a lot of time just trying to figure out how I can make it readable, so I appreciate all the help from everyone.
Gotrootdude, I tried the Voodoo site, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get the download. Thought I had it, but when I tried to install the program, I got some message about illegal action (in the MS sense, not the law sense, of course!). But thanks anyway.