Images and regions

All of this starts in the free cursor (Ctrl-v), a thin cross that can go anywhere on the page. h j k l move it; w b J K (or Ctrl-h/j/k/l) move it faster; v starts a rectangle.

Copying a region as an image#

For slides, a report or a message, mark a rectangle with v and then use one of these keys.

It is drawn at copy_dpi (300 dpi by default), in the page's own colours (also in dark mode), with highlights and filled-in forms as they are. The message says its size and resolution.

Putting a picture on a page#

To put a signature, a screenshot, a figure or a stamp on the page, use one of these.

• With a rectangle marked (v), the picture fits inside it.
• Otherwise its top-left corner goes at the cross, at its natural size, but never larger than 80% of the page.
• Transparent PNGs stay transparent.
• Right after it is placed, it can be moved and resized (below).

Pictures are standard stamp annotations, so other readers show them, the panel lists them, x deletes them and u undoes.

Quality. Pictures stay sharp when you zoom in. Small ones (a signature, a screenshot) are stored with more pixels than the screen shows, enlarged with a bicubic filter, so they stay smooth up to about 250% zoom on a HiDPI screen. Images up to 4096 pixels are kept exactly (a JPEG is copied byte for byte); only very large ones are reduced, never below 4096 pixels on the longer side. A 24-megapixel photo goes in in under a second and adds about 2 MB to the file. Pictures over 120 megapixels are refused.

Writing text on a page#

For a note in the margin, a label on a figure, a line in a form that has no field, go to the free cursor (Ctrl-v), put the cross where the text goes, or mark its width with v (a rectangle works too), and press T.

The box is then like a picture. Put the cross on it (or click it) and press e, then use these keys.

With the mouse, drag the box to move it, and a side or corner to change its width.

The text is real text in Helvetica, one of the fonts every PDF reader has, so nothing is embedded, and a paragraph adds only a few bytes a letter to the file, and other readers show it sharp at any zoom and can select, copy and search it. They can also move or delete the box; to edit it, use Nomadys-PDF (the text, the size and the width are kept in the box). Accents and the usual signs (quotes, dashes, the euro) work; letters outside the Latin alphabet (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic) show as ? for now, and the text you wrote is kept in the box. Bold, italic and equations are planned.

Moving, resizing, turning#

Put the cross on a picture or a highlighted area and press e (or click the picture with the mouse, as explained below).

Highlighted text stays with its words; only areas and pictures move.

Turning to any angle#

o while moving a picture starts the turning mode, with these keys.

The picture turns around its centre and every reader shows it turned. A mirror (f left-right, F top-bottom) is as seen on screen, so it also reverses the direction of the angle. Like the 90° turns, the angle and the mirror are kept in the PDF without touching the picture, so they can be undone at any time, with no loss of quality.

A cropped picture cannot be turned to a free angle (uncrop it first with c then u), and a picture turned to a free angle cannot be cropped (make it upright with o then u).

With the mouse#

Everything above can be done with the mouse too; the keys and the mouse mix freely. Click a picture (or the edge of a framed area) to select it, and a frame with handles appears, and the keys above work on it. Click anywhere else to finish.

The pointer changes shape over a handle. While you drag, the picture is drawn straight from its pixels, so it follows the mouse at once even on a heavy page; the PDF is changed when you let go, and Esc or u puts it back.

Cropping#

c while moving a picture starts cropping, with these keys.

The picture itself is never cut or re-encoded. The PDF keeps it whole and only shows a part of it, so a crop, or a turn, can be undone at any time, even after the file was closed and opened again, with no loss of quality.