Extract text from "flattened" PDF? #310
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Hi, I'm attempting to extract text from a PDF, but it's not being extracted. I've tried with multiple other PDFs and the text extracts fine, so there's something particular about this PDF in question. Could anyone suggest some ways I can debug why the text is not being extracted? For reference the PDF is a single page, version 1.4, Author is Canva, and Security is None. File itself is 1.8MB. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks |
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Replies: 2 comments 2 replies
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Did a bit more testing with Canva - when a document is "flattened" during the export process, it becomes unreadable by pypdfium2. Please see the two attached files. |
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AFAICS, the |
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Yeah I noticed the full version was massive! Thanks for your answer, OCR tools here I come… |
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(note for readers: canva's flattening should not be confused with PDF form field flattening as provided by pdfium) |
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AFAICS, the
canva_flattenedPDF just doesn't have a text layer, so there is nothing for a pdf engine to extract. You could use an OCR tool like ocrmypdf to change that, though.Also note that
canva_fullis a vector PDF, whereascanva_flattenedmerely contains a rasterized image of the former.For this reason, I recommend just not using this "flattening", as it evidently rasterizes, which is inelegant (maybe you've noticed the file size of
canva_flattenedis way higher than ofcanva_full).