Solved Invert B & W PDF Documents

[MourningStar]

Not sure where to put this :

I have many multi-page pdf documents with black text on white background and would like to know of an easy, simple way to reverse, so I end up with white text on black background.

-thank you

 

[mitchell65]

The whole essence of a PDF file is that (normally) you can't edit it! There are some third party commercial progs that might do a text reverse but they are not cheap. $180 for instance.
Even then if the documents have been commercially encrypted you won't get any joy.
Did you create the original docs from whence the PDF's were created? If so then you could do the reversal in the originating program and then print to PDF again.

 

[MourningStar]

Thnx mitchell65. I did not create the originals. Unless anyone comes along with a made-to-order solution I have decided to export the PDFs as images, run a batch image inversion utility and import & save as PDFs. I was hoping Adobe could do this but I was unable to find this function within.

 

[mitchell65]

I would be very interested to hear if that works. Clearly you will use copies of the files and not the originals just in case they don't save to PDF. I would be surprised if it works as I have never been able to "Save to PDF" only print to file in PDF format! No doubt you will try one first before attacking a batch?

 

[MourningStar]

I would be very interested to hear if that works. Clearly you will use copies of the files and not the originals just in case they don't save to PDF. I would be surprised if it works as I have never been able to "Save to PDF" only print to file in PDF format! No doubt you will try one first before attacking a batch?

Well, I tried this on a test page from a multi-page pdf and all went smoothly, imported and saved as pdf. I am now trying to locate user-friendly freeware that will invert multiple pages (batch) at once. I'm not good with command-line utilities.

 

[MourningStar]

Lo and behold I found a batch function in Fastone, a utility I already had on my machine (doh!) Still, I'll give this topic a few days for someone to come along with something simpler before I mark it 'solved'. - thnx all

 

[gladson1976]

Not sure if you can batch this process, but in Adobe Acrobat Reader there is an option to change the colors

Goto Edit -> Preferences -> Accessibility
Check the box that says Replace Colors and select the background and text color as black and white instead of white and black.

 

[MourningStar]

^
gladson1976 - that's the ticket, thank you !!!!!

 

[MourningStar]

^
gladson1976 - that's the ticket, thank you !!!!!

Unfortunately, this method is great if reading the file via the Adobe interface. As far as I know the file cannot be saved with those settings. When the new file is viewed by any other app, it is the original black text on white.

I can accept going thru the hoops mentioned previous. The sad thing is the final pdf is extremely large. E.G. the original 48 page 250 KB pdf file ends up being a 7.1 MB pdf. And that was reducing the jpegs by 50%! Further reducing the jpegs results in an unacceptable graphic.

 

[mitchell65]

So back to the drawing board. I still think the only sure way of doint this is to convert each file back to a Word Doc then edit then print to PDF. Long winded but i don't know how many files we're talking about and how important it is to have them in reverse. I am a retired printer and one of the rules of reverse printing is never use a small serif type face and if practical use a bold sans serif face. It is much more difficult to "flow" read a reverse type page. That's from an old fashioned printing point of view, of course.
Anyway to proceed. there is a third part program that has 14 days free trial with no limit to the number of conversions. I haven't tried it but it might be of interest to you. It's here:
Wondershare PDF to Word Converter - Wondershare Official

 

[md2lgyk]

The free program Irfanview will create negatives of PDF documents. It seems to work ony one page at a time, but perhaps there's a batch mode I didn't see.

 

[MourningStar]

The free program Irfanview will create negatives of PDF documents. It seems to work ony one page at a time, but perhaps there's a batch mode I didn't see.

thnx - I used that a while back and was not satisfied, clumsy and limited. What I found acceptable was FastStone (also free, more robust).

 

[MourningStar]

What started all this was the lack of 'night mode' function for pdf files on my Kindle Fire. Until now, all previous responses to this situation over in the Kindle Help Forum stated that, the device's night mode function (as well as a few other functions) could not do this for pdf books. Hence my efforts and this post. TODAY, I just learned that Amazon offers a free Adobe Reader app for my device. That's it! Game over!

thnx all.

 

[gladson1976]

Glad it worked out fine.

 

[andrew129260]

The kindle fire uses a mocked up/customized (by amazon) version of android and amazons appstore. They have the more popular stuff, but not everything from google play.

Glad you got it working

 

[mitchell65]

Wished we had known that the reason for reverse printing was for easier reading on a Kindle. Might have got to the solution much sooner! Still glad it'd sorted.

 

[MourningStar]

Wished we had known that the reason for reverse printing was for easier reading on a Kindle. Might have got to the solution much sooner! Still glad it'd sorted.

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Thnx to all for your help and for putting up with me o).