I installed this and registered it on April 8th. Today, it says un-registered and the BUY NOW! button is highlighted. Also, it adds a logo of it's own to the modified file telling me that it is un-registered. I tried to re-register using the key in the read me file, but get a msg from the program saying it is already registered. What gives?

When it comes to Softorbits giveaway always turnoff the autoupdate else the giveaway is unusable. Softorbit is smart.

Cons
The screen is very small and there is no way to full screen. I cannot see clearly what's on the picture or unnecessary picture in my pdf because of too small screen.

I'm not impress and it is over price. I will stick to Expert PDF Pro to remove unnecessary pictures or text.

For those wondering about the legitimacy of such a program, here's one reason, (and why I was interested in it): I review papers for academic journals. The journals frequently send me pdf copies of the paper with their watermark on every page. It's extremely tough on my eyes (some of these papers run into 50+ pages often with tables having 10 point TNR). I have asked them to remove the watermark, but they refuse. So I want to do it myself. It's possibly not legal, but it sure is legitimate. I hope.

It still ticks me off... The author of this program doesn't
give us an option to turn off the update check! (the only thing even listed in "Preferences" is "Language"!)
It just burns my biscuits and I'll attempt to find a way and report it here when I can and have time...

What worked for me this time (in registry editor-if you don't know what that is, don't even attempt it and move on!):
I went to this key (on my XP SP3 installation, yours may be different!)
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-776561741-*********-*********-****\Software\softorbits\PDFLogoRemover
and changed the "disableUpdates" DWORD Value from "0" to "1". Good luck.

Would have been really nice if someone had mentioned that this is the exact same version (1.0) offered February 26th of last year.

If SoftOrbits didn't make any improvements to their program from our comments almost 14 months ago, (Same version) why solicit our comments again now?

10:............... Why don’t you offer some software that will enable me to steal another website’s html code with a simple click of one button?
Comment by Larry
--------------

If you're using Firefox you can already do that. It takes more than one button though. Click Tools/Web Developer/Page Source (the rest is left up to the student).

Concerning this GOTD offering:
$50 might be a bit too expensive to be a beta tester.

@Larry
If you are using IE or one of many other internet browsers, you can pretty much get the HTML code that easily. It takes a couple clicks, but it's not at all difficult.

Hello. I'm a translator and I translate from pdfs a lot, so I would enjoy a tool that would let me remove background images simply and easily for better readability and to facilitate possible OCR. This one seems to do the job, although it's difficult to choose from the small display which images to delete and which to leave in (e.g. because they contain some text).

As a test:

1. I opened a busy PDF (containing many images), with the intent of extracting two or three of the images. However, the icons presented for each of the images are so small, I can't tell what is what. And there is no zoom feature to assist with this.

2. I blindly selected a few image icons, anyway. Interestingly, it left a colored box behind where each of the images had been. But only on some pages. Why? Flattening issues? Shading issues? Whatever the reason, this is not acceptable, and certainly calls into question the integrity of any batch process.

3. On the upside, I used a PDF object viewer to compare the old and new files and it appears to have kept the original structure (as far as objects, elements, and metadata are concerned). This is refreshing, as there are far to many PDF manipulating programs out there that totally annihilate the original structure of the PDF.

All in all, with the too-small icons and the inconsistencies, I can't trust this software to produce a reliable output PDF.

I guess I'll just wait for version 1.1.

Cheers.

# SoftOrbits

Thanks for your answer. Of course, the main intent of your app is to help users save ink for printing purposes, but the goal of a watermark is usually to protect the copyright of a TEXTBOOK or VIDEO.

So if you remove it and then use that text or video as if it was yours, you may violate the copyright laws.

Of course, it all depends on users' behaviour, but your app can cause (at least indirectly) such kind of issue, taking into account that most people out there never print an entire PDF on their own.

After all PDF ebooks have been invented as a means to replace PAPER BOOKS, haven't they?? LOL!!

I would imagine it cannot remove all watermarks because some .pdf files have already been flattened. It would therefore be unable to remove flattened watermarks because the watermark its self will become a part of the print image its self.

Don't knock the developer for not doing things that aren't possible to do. If you need a watermark removed from a flattened .pdf, you need to open up Photoshop. It will need to be done by hand.

@ Vojta (#15): If the document has a dark background, I can see where the app could save a lot of ink.

This tool is not designed to break copyright laws but it helps to clean backgrounds, saving toner or ink when printing multi-page documents.

"but it also helps you save up to 90% of ink and toner." - What???

Whoops: thought the tool to be a joke...:

# has very limited abilities
# even fails on many tasks
# the pricing is ridiculous

ANY PDF editor would do a better job;
If you don´t have any PDF editor you could use the module "draw" from within Open-Office for the job - but of course without batch processing!

I often use the Bullzip "print to PDF" program
to print Wikipedia articles, web sites, ebooks,
long list of readers comments to Amazon books
and news articles, etc.
as PDF files
so I can read them on my IPad,

and I don't feel guilty about removing the
annoying logos and watermarks and repetitions,
that some web sites use to overlay public domain works.

I might also mention that
I use the "PrintWhatYouLike "Bookmarklet"
to clean up a page before I print it to PDF.

I just hope this programs helps clean up some of my PDF files.

This sort of program is used not only for removing text watermarks, but other unwanted objects in a photo. And like all other such utilities, they do not work 100% of the time and they do give mixed results. Had this been promoted as a remover of unwanted objects from photos, there wouldn't be such negative comments about removing watermarks that are specifically placed on objects to prevent unlawful copying and use. What I find surprising is the blatant promotion of illegal activites, not the fact that this software can reportedly remove unwanted objects from photos, which includes many legit uses as well as illegitamate uses, such as removing watermarks.

I've tried dozens of these utilities, and none are worth paying for. I remove unwanted objects from my photographs the tried and true method - I manually remove them using my main editing software, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.

Ashraf, you wrote, "You can use batch processing to remove the same watermark from multiple PDFs but you cannot remove different watermarks from multiple PDFs via batch processing". Well, yes, that is correct. Why is that a problem for you? A watermark is just another of dozens of objects on a page. Like ANY OTHER program, you have to tell the search engine what to look for.

If this program can't remove all watermarks, then bravo! What is the purpose of a watermark? - It's there to prevent others from copying and reusing (without giving proper credit) to the rightful owner of the image or text. Shame on GOTD for even promoting this kind of software. Why don't you offer some software that will enable me to steal another website's html code with a simple click of one button?

LOL...nice GAOTD today...a great way to cheat people and break copyright laws "legally" (????)...LOL!!

Joking aside, can't see any use of that if it doesn't support password protected PDFs.

Besides that, it's not able to remove any kind of watermarks out there, but only those being in the form of an image.

Honestly not a great deal for a 50 bucks app!!


BEST FREE ALTERNATIVES

If the PDF files are NOT password protected you can use any FREE Image editor out there with a CLONE TOOL such as GIMP or Paint.NET, after capturing a copy of the PDF with a FREE screen capture tool like PicPick, for instance:

http://www.gimpology.com/submission/view/how_to_remove_a_watermark_the_fast_amp_easy_way_

http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au/Features/Effects/Plugins/Others/AddRemove_watermark/

Alternatively, you can convert your PDF file into WORD, using UNIPDF (see link below), so as to manually remove the Watermark and then convert it back to PDF:

http://unipdf.com

Another clever way to remove watermarks from a PDF is described here:

http://superuser.com/questions/448519/how-to-remove-watermark-from-pdf-using-pdftk

Enjoy!!

At first, it opened source files. After 3 or 4 times, I would select a source file and it would not open it. The program would just sit there. My only choice is Help or Cancel. I would hit cancel and the program closes. The program says it's registered and my PDFs are standard PDFs - nothing fancy.

Not looking too good at this point.

Installed fine, BUT, after getting the message that it was registered, the program still shows as unregistered when you use it.
Uninstalled this waste of time. So many programs that promise "batch processing" just don't do it.

did not recognise a watermark on every page. Nice try. Uninstalling.

Only sort-of works. Tried it on a file. It removed the first page that was a logo, but did not even recognise a watermark on every page. Nice try, but no cigar. Uninstalling.

If this program can't remove ALL watermarks, then it fails to do what it says on the tin. No thanks, i'll pass on this.

I would not see non support for password protected PDF's as a con as it's not something that I would expect to see from any reputable software vendor.

Pros
*Very easy to use
*Supports batch processing that allows you to remove the same watermark from multiple PDFs
*Removes more than just watermarks — allows users to remove non-watermark images from PDFs, too

Cons
*Cannot remove all watermarks
*Does not support user-password protected PDFs
*You can use batch processing to remove the same watermark from multiple PDFs but you cannot remove different watermarks from multiple PDFs via batch processing

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review