PDF Changer

What does Visual Redaction change?

Frequently asked question for Visual Redaction.

Open tool · How-to · Privacy

What does Visual Redaction change?

It rasterizes every page at 200 DPI, draws solid black rectangles over marked areas, and exports the result as image-only pages. The original text, fonts, layers, and metadata are destroyed. This is not a cosmetic overlay — the content is gone.

What this does not protect

  • Redaction is irreversible by design. There is no undo after burning. The original text under redacted areas is destroyed, not hidden.
  • Output file size increases significantly because every page becomes a raster image. Expect 0.5-1.5MB per page at 200 DPI.
  • Text in the output PDF is not selectable. If recipients need searchable text, they would need to OCR the result.
  • Documents over 200 pages are capped for browser memory safety. Split first, then redact sections individually.
  • This is visual redaction only. It does not produce PDF redaction annotations compatible with Adobe's redaction workflow.
  • It cannot fix compromised devices, accounts, or unsafe sharing channels.