How to render a PDF without either text or images

Question

Does anyone know a way to render or export a pdf with either the text or the images stripped out?

I noticed a way that uses GhostScript: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38010769/4437032

Unfortunately it would require me to get a commercial licence (since I intend to distribute).

The renderer I have been using up until now has been Pdfium, but that library has no capability to do this (without modifying the native code).

I also looked into PDFSharp, but it seems to be more for appending things to PDFs rather than removing things.

I cannot expect any kind of pdf editing software to be installed on machines that run my program, so ideally I'm looking for some free library.

Does anyone know of any solutions?

is the output code under your control, or do you mean to convert existing PDF files? — Cee McSharpface, May 07 '18 at 14:52
PDFSharp claims "Modify, merge, and split existing PDF files" so that may well be worth a second look. — Cee McSharpface, May 08 '18 at 09:12
@dlatikay Its not that its not possible with PDFsharp, but to the best of my knowledge, you would have to manually parse and decode all the images (which I have tried). I've found an acceptable solution via the free version of Spire.Pdf, so I'll answer the question soon. — prw56, May 08 '18 at 17:18

prw56 · Answer 1 · 2018-05-08T20:07:26.693

-1

I ended up using the free version of Spire.Pdf to accomplish my goal, using it to create pdfs with either text or images. The free version limits you to a max of 10 pages in processed pdfs, but that is acceptable for me.

No images: delete all the images using Spire.Pdf

No text: extract all the images using Spire.Pdf, draw them onto a blank pdf.

then display the modified pdfs.

edited May 08 '18 at 20:07

answered May 08 '18 at 17:25

prw56

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How to render a PDF without either text or images

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