Editing pdf line drawings

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2018-04-01 01:11:57

I am new to pixelmator and have high hopes that it will do what I need done. I am receiving line drawings from a Chinese manufacturer that I do business with. I need to post them on my website. But first I need to edit them. I need to remove certain lines and text and add lines, arrows and numbers. I am receiving them in a pdf format. Any suggestions as to the procedure I should follow in pixelmator?
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2018-04-01 08:25:21

Hi John.

The first thing to know about Pixelmator* is that it is a bitmap application. While it has some vector features internally, it will convert vector to bitmap on import and export only bitmaps. If you are exporting for web I'm guessing that having a bitmap as a final product will be fine (if not, you may have to look for either a vector graphics app or a PDF editor).

So, to the import. Pixelmator will happily open a PDF and convert it to a bitmap while it does so. By the looks of it, it rasterises the PDF at a resolution of 300 dpi. If that's fine with you then go with it. If you need more control (or if the PDF has multiple pages), I recommend opening the PDF in the Preview app and exporting to a bitmap from there. The export functionality of the Preview app will export only the current page and will let you choose the resolution of the exported file.

Workflow from there is just: load into Pixelmator -> do whatever you need to** -> export.

Hope this helps.

- Stef.

*As far as I am aware, Pixelmator 3.7 and Pixelmator Pro 1.0.9 have the same functionality in this area so everything in this post will apply to both Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro.
**If you run into any problems, come back to the Pixelmator community here or the unofficial Pixelmator discord here: https://discord.gg/wsJukbr