In draw, want to copy, to clipboard, an image area
Select them by dragging a selection rectangle with the mouse, then Ctrl-C.
Note: You must select the whole area of the objects!
It is an absurd that a drawing program cannot select a partial area of the screen and has to rely on external programs like MS Paint to do it.
2 Likes
Why? Drawing and painting may not be the same. It may depend on the context.
Isn’t it “absurd” that MS Paint can’t edit vector graphics?
Software has its limits, and needs to regard them.
A jack-of-all-trades-device would either have gravely limited features concerning each of its “trades” or be no longer to handle for non-professionals (and probably also for professionals) due to its cluttered UI.
The Draw component is dedicated to vector graphics, and has means to position/resize/clip … images/graphics from different sources in many formats. It handles graphical objects. Its “screen” isn’t treated as one big bitmap.
If you want to treat a group of objects this way, you should (probably with a copy) create the group, convert it to a bitmap or a metafile, crop it and (Ctrl+C) copy the result to the clipboard. What you get this way you can even post in a comment on this site then. The example is a clipped group made of a blue rectangle, a yellow ellipse, and part of my avatar image. Everything composed with Draw within seconds. No “Paint” needed.
1 Like
Is the capability of selecting or editing a part of a screen image a rare one? Everytime I used Libreoffice Draw was to open and edit pdf files and everytime I wanted to change a pdf page I had to copy-paste to MS Paint a full page to edit it. I think software is created to ease the life of users and not force them to comply with what software creaters decide to define as “draw” or “paint”. I hope Libreoffice will allow this feature in the future, either in Draw itself or by opening an open-source painting software within the Libreoffice Draw. This is very needed and quite helpful. Tks for your reply.
Who told you Draw was the appropriate tool? It isn’t.
Why don’t you expect “Paint” to import pdf the way you want it? (I don’t know anything about “Paint”.)
If you actually inserted a pdf as an “image” into a Draw document you didn’t something generally recommended. Nonetheless Draw offers the Crop feature for it, and you can use it the way I already described, then copy the result and paste it somewhere. If the software you expect to accept this pasting actually does isn’t under the control of LibO.
You can also combine the original import or the cropped “area” with any kind of objects Draw can create or insert. Of course, this doesn’t “change the pdf”, but create something new probably looking more the way you want it. Draw is neither a pdf editor nor an approved forgery tool.
If you open a pdf with Draw, the effects depend.
- The pdf may have been “image only” (from a scanner e.g). In this case the result is the same as after “Insert”.
- If it was a “searchable pdf” like scanners also may produce with the help of some OCR or a pdf exported by a text processor, Draw will convert the contained text pieces, (probably hidden behind an image), to TextBox objects.
Well, you won’t ride on a lawnmower from Pitsburgh to Atlanta nor would you mow your dooryard with a farmer’s buncher. And if you used such machinery the funny way, you would at least read the manual.
“Paint” may be a toy. Donno. LibreOffice is real software, and there are guides.
You propbably shouldn’t use Draw the way you tried.
I don’t claim to know everything I take from “supposed memory” for sure.
I really disliked your last comment, quite arrogant, showing a lot of prejudices toward the use of software which should be done in a certain way, the “correct way” according to your comments. MS Paint is a simple generic software. According to wikipedia:
" Microsoft Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens and saves files in [Windows bitmap] (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. For its simplicity and that it is included with Windows, it rapidly became one of the most used applications in the early versions of Windows, introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time. It is still widely used for simple image manipulation tasks."
Do you see any mention to MS Paint as a toy software? About the use of Libreoffice Draw, which has both the capability of opening and exporting pdf files, please show me the link to the Libreoffice license web page where it is mentioned that you are not allowed or cannot edit pdf files with this software, so that I will stop using it in the way I have been using it.
Feel free to call my comments arrogant. Be sure that I personally am not.
My notion of arrogance concerning such a site as we have here may be different from yours.
It’s a bit related to claims concerning what should be and what developers obviously miss - not backed by any evidence concerning sufficient experience.
I didn’t claim experience with “Paint”, but, of course, I asked the wikipedia before I posted.
(And I’m not a developer.)
This is free software, so feel free to do as you like. Some people, who use a more technical approach may think your path is not a wise one, but there are no legal resons to stop you. But it is also your choice to use this “absurd” (your term) piece of software to edit your pdf.
Have fun on your way, but you may consider Lupp was just hinting Draw was not designed for your task, so there may be some obstacles.
“Draw is neither a pdf editor nor an approved forgery tool”. As there is a suggestion of the possibility of using Draw as a forgery tool (which any pdf editor could be used in this way as well), I want to clarify why I use Draw: first I watch a web page page I want to keep its content, as a result of many linux and open source newsletters I receive daily; then I use Firefox add-on “Print PDF & Friendly” which creates a pdf page with the web page content, quite well I may add; then I open the pdf file with Libreoffice Draw to clean the content I am not interested, like advertisements or something I am not interested in keeping; then I use the export option of Draw to create a clean pdf the way I want. It has worked well.
A “work around”, using Draw Drawing, to copy an area of an image to the clip board. Open image - crop to desired area - copy to clipboard(ctrlC) - close image(don’t save) - open image you want to copy area to - copy clipboard(ctrlV). Note: to insert clipboard into original image, reopen it.