Print to pdf generally loses the text and just makes it an image though. Which can balloon size and prevent ctrl+f without running ocr on it and saving an additional layer with more mistakes than the original.
I deliberately use the print as image feature if I don’t want someone to be able to select text or search the document (like if I’m sending something with sensitive info as an attachment to an email). Most of the time, I have that option disabled so the document can be searchable and text can be copied from it.
Gmail reads the images with OCR and adds it to search terms. Your steps are a noble effort to increase reverse engineering effort, however there are image to text desktop apps now so that effort on the receivers side is almost nothing these days.
Right…the idea isn’t to make it foolproof, it’s just to make a barrier. People generally go for easier targets over ones with a small barrier. If you have two bikes next to each other in public, one with a bike lock and one with no lock at all, the casual thief is way more likely to steal the one without a lock. Bike locks can easily be broken, but they serve as a deterrent.
Print to pdf generally loses the text and just makes it an image though. Which can balloon size and prevent ctrl+f without running ocr on it and saving an additional layer with more mistakes than the original.
Are you sure you don’t have “print as image” enabled there? It should keep it as a layered PDF, not rasterizing.
I probably did. Think I’ve had some things not print correctly without that on an actual printer so I turned that on sometimes?
I deliberately use the print as image feature if I don’t want someone to be able to select text or search the document (like if I’m sending something with sensitive info as an attachment to an email). Most of the time, I have that option disabled so the document can be searchable and text can be copied from it.
Gmail reads the images with OCR and adds it to search terms. Your steps are a noble effort to increase reverse engineering effort, however there are image to text desktop apps now so that effort on the receivers side is almost nothing these days.
fwiw its trivial to OCR it. single click in many pdf software.
but I guess it slows down some people
Right…the idea isn’t to make it foolproof, it’s just to make a barrier. People generally go for easier targets over ones with a small barrier. If you have two bikes next to each other in public, one with a bike lock and one with no lock at all, the casual thief is way more likely to steal the one without a lock. Bike locks can easily be broken, but they serve as a deterrent.