Creating non-printing images?

[tomslacks]

Have been unable to find if I can create non-printing images with acrobat. I have tried to create and image in Illustrator and make the non-printing and save as a pdf but when I open with reader or acrobat it does not show the image at all. I am trying to create a form that users fill out and then print onto a pre-printed form paper so i need the background not to print. is this possible or do i need to go another route?

 

[mlg4035]

One way you might try to go about it is, instead of saving the image as a PDF out of Illustrator, I would start with a blank PDF file(for example, 'print' a blank Word document to PDF using Distiller), then add in your background picture(must be a PDF,BMP,GIF,JPG,PCX,PNG,or TIFF file) by creating a Button field and setting the Appearence propery to "Visible but doesn't print".

In the Properties for the Button field:

On the Appearance tab -
select Type>"Button",
check "Read Only",
select Form Field is>"Visible but doesn't print".

On the Options tab -
select Layout>"Icon Only",
click the Select Icon button and select your background
image.

NOTE: You may have to adjust the size of the form field and use the Advanced Layout button on the Options tab to set the scaling of the image to make it look right: My image looked tiny when I set the Scale When option to "Never". So I tried a few things and found that selecting "Too Small" instead of "Never" and sizing the form field itself to the original background image's size worked for me.

You didn't mention how big your background image is compared
to the form itself so the following may not apply in your case:

If the background image/Button field is the same size as the form, then it's hard to add new fields to the form because when you click to create a new field, the background image/Button field gets selected instead of allowing you to create a new field. (There's probably a keyboard shortcut that'll allow you to create one field directly on top of another without selecting the former, but I don't know what it is.)

So, you can simply copy/paste the background image/Button field and then change the properties, size, actions, etc. of the copy to make it a Text field. After that, you can copy/paste the Text field for however many fields there are in the form and give each of the copies a unique name.

I hope this helps!
MLG4035
'Well, it's one louder, isn't it?...
What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?...Eleven. Exactly. One louder.'

 

[tomslacks]

Awesome that did the trick, thanks for your pointers

T