Expert: Ken Black - 9/14/2009

Question
Hi Ken,

I am encountering a problem.

I have created a document in Word 2007.  I have inserted a jpeg into that document.  I want to 'mask' something in the photo, so I have done this by going to 'insert', inserting a 'shape' (in this case a square, and then positioning it over the jpeg.

I then saved this document to pdf through Word.  It appears 'masked' in the pdf.  However, when I now right-click on the image in the pdf, and copy it, I can paste it into a word document (or powerpoint) 'unmasked'.  I thought that by saving as a pdf it would stay masked, but I am obviously doing something wrong.

I am using the free version of Acrobat--Acrobat Reader 9.

Can you help please?

Jeff

Answer
Hi Jeff,

Your entire image is still present in the pdf file. When you are copying it, you are only copying the image and not the image with the mask.

Acrobat Reader lacks the tools to select the image and mask together. To do this, at the very least you would need Acrobat Professional, and even then you may not get the result you are looking for.

What you are really needing to use is an image editing program. There you can crop and mask your image and save it as another version. You may even have such a program already. MS Office comes with an image editor. If not, there are many image editing programs available for little cost, if not free.
Photoshop.com and Picasa are two online storage and editing sites that are free and fairly easy to use.

Thanks,

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