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It's easier than ever to de-censor videos

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
382 points DamonHD | 3 comments | 15 Apr 25 17:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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AdmiralAsshat ◴[15 Apr 25 19:33 UTC] No.43697419[source]▶
My Windows-98 approved method for redacting a screenshot:

1) Open screenshot in MS-Paint (can you even install MS-Paint anymore? Or is it Paint3D now?)

2) Select Color 1: Black

3) Select Color 2: Black

4) Use rectangular selection tool to select piece of text I want to censor.

5) Click the DEL key. The rectangle should now be solid black.

6) Save the screenshot.

As far as I know, AI hasn't figured out a way to de-censor solid black yet.

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1. layer8 ◴[15 Apr 25 20:03 UTC] No.43697695[source]▶
Don’t do this on a PDF document though. ;)
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2. jcul ◴[15 Apr 25 20:31 UTC] No.43698016[source]▶
Should be ok if you rasterize the PDF. Run something like pdftotext after to be sure it doesn't have any text.

Or to be safe, print it and scan it, or just take a screenshot.

replies(1): >>43698066 #
3. layer8 ◴[15 Apr 25 20:36 UTC] No.43698066[source]▶
Testing that it doesn’t have text doesn’t help if the text was a bitmap in the first place.

Normally the use case is that you still want to distribute it as a PDF, usually consisting of many pages, and without loss of quality, so the printing/scanning/screenshotting option may not be very practical.

No, the real solution is to use an editor that allows you to remove text (and/or cut out bitmaps), before you add black rectangles for clarity.