How to Redact an Image Inside a PDF
To redact an image inside a PDF, press R in Gold PDF, drag a box over the part of the picture that must disappear, and save a new copy. On save the page is rebuilt with the bar burned into the pixels, so the covered part of the image no longer exists in the file.
Quick steps
- Make a copy of the PDF and keep the original somewhere safe.
- Open the copy and go to the page with the image.
- Press R to switch on the Redact tool.
- Drag a box over the face, signature, number or other area to hide. Make it slightly larger than the area.
- Repeat for every image and every page where the same picture appears.
- Press Ctrl+S and save under a new file name.
- Reopen the new file and check the result by eye, by clicking the area and by zooming in.
Why images need special care
Text and pictures are stored differently in a PDF. Words are stored as characters you can search and copy. A photo, scan or screenshot is stored as an image object: a grid of coloured pixels, often with the whole picture kept at full size even when only a small part shows on the page.
That has two consequences. First, a rectangle drawn over a picture is a separate object lying on top of it. The picture underneath is complete and untouched, and another program may be able to pull it out, or the rectangle can simply be deleted. This is the same weakness described in does drawing a black box redact a PDF, except that the hidden material is a face or a signature instead of a sentence.
Second, cropping is not removal either. A page may only display a part of an image while the file still holds all of it. If you only change what is visible, the rest may still be there.
| Method | What it does to the picture | Safe to share? |
|---|---|---|
| Black rectangle or highlight | Sits on top; image is intact underneath | No |
| White box or Whiteout | Same as above, in white | No |
| Crop the page view | Hides parts of the page; content may remain | Not reliably |
| Real redaction, then save | Rebuilds the page with the bar burned into the pixels | Yes, after you test it |
| Deleting the image entirely | Removes the object from the file | Yes, if nothing else shows it |
What actually happens when you redact an image in Gold PDF
When you save, Gold PDF rebuilds every page that contains a redaction as a high-resolution image with the black bars drawn into it. The original page content, including the original image object, is replaced. Because the covered pixels are overwritten, there is nothing underneath to recover. The remaining text on the page is restored as an invisible layer, so the page can still be searched and copied apart from the redacted regions. For the text side of this method, see how to permanently remove text from a PDF.
The same rebuilt page also means the parts of the picture you did not redact are kept as part of the page image. The result looks like the original page apart from the bars.
Which images people usually redact
Faces and photos
A photo of a person, a child in a school form, or a bystander in an incident report may need hiding. Cover the whole face with a margin. A bar over only the eyes can still leave the person recognisable.
Signatures and initials
A scanned signature can be reused by someone else. Redact it if you are sharing a document as an example or a template. If a signature must stay but you want to prevent copying, think about whether the recipient really needs the signed version.
ID cards, passports and licences
A scanned ID contains a photo, a number, an address and often a signature, all in one image. Redact each piece the recipient does not need. Your local rules decide what a recipient may legally ask for, so check them first. For numbers, see how to black out a Social Security number in a PDF.
Screenshots
Screenshots often include an email address, a browser tab title, a file path, a username or a notification. Look at the edges as well as the middle.
Scanned pages
A scanned document is one big image, so every word in it is an image area. The approach is the same, but you can also run OCR with Ctrl+Shift+O to make the words searchable and find every occurrence of a name. The walkthrough is in how to redact a scanned PDF document.
Step by step: doing it carefully
Cover more than you think you need
Edges of a face, the tail of a signature and the last digit of a number are easy to leave out. Drag the box a little wider than the detail. A bar that is a few pixels short leaves a visible sliver.
Look for the same image elsewhere
A logo, signature stamp or photo may repeat on several pages, in headers, or on a cover sheet. Page through the whole document, or use the thumbnails, before you save.
Check for text hidden in the image
A picture of a letter, a table or a form contains words. Those words are not searchable until OCR is applied, so a quick search will not find them. Redact the picture area by eye.
Save as a new file
Press Ctrl+S and give the new file a plain name that does not reveal who or what it concerns. Never overwrite the only original, because a redaction cannot be reversed after you save.
How to test the result
Do these checks on the saved copy, not the working one:
- Look at 200% zoom. The covered area should be solid, with no ghost of the picture around the edges.
- Click and drag. Try to select or move the area. There should be no loose image or box to grab.
- Search. Press Ctrl+F for any word that appeared in the image, if you ran OCR. There should be no result.
- Copy. Drag across the bar, copy and paste into Notepad. The paste should be empty.
- Open in another viewer. If you can, open the file in a different program or browser and look again.
The full method is in how to check if a PDF redaction is secure. If a check fails, go back to your working copy, fix the area and save a new file.
A short example
A landlord wants to send a rental application to an insurer as an example of what tenants fill in. Page two holds a scanned driving licence with a photo, number and address, and page three holds a handwritten signature. The landlord copies the file, presses R, covers the photo, the number, the address and the signature with slightly oversized boxes, and saves a new file. At 200% zoom the areas are solid black. Clicking them selects nothing, and a search for the licence number finds nothing. Only then is the file sent.
What Gold PDF does and does not do
Gold PDF is a free Windows PDF editor that works offline: files are not uploaded and no account is needed. Its Redact tool (R) marks areas, including areas of images, and removes them when the page is rebuilt on save. OCR runs locally for English and Hebrew. It does not detect faces or signatures automatically, so you choose every area yourself. It cannot undo a redaction after you save, and rebuilt pages are images with a text layer, so file sizes can grow and image quality is set by the rebuild. It runs on Windows only and is not legal advice.
For the tool overview, see Redact a PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Can you redact an image inside a PDF?
Yes. Draw a redaction over the part of the image you want gone, save, and the page is rebuilt so the covered pixels are no longer in the file. Drawing a plain shape over the image does not do this.
Is covering an image with a black rectangle enough?
No. A shape sits on top of the picture, and the original image can usually still be extracted or revealed by deleting or moving the shape.
What about text that appears inside an image?
Text in a picture is just pixels. Redact the area it occupies, and run OCR first if you also need to find it with search.
How do I check an image redaction worked?
Save a new copy, reopen it, try to select and move the area, and export or zoom into the page to confirm the covered pixels are solid black.
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