Anyone notice how the Dark Horse watermark in the lower right obstructs the words and images so you can't really see them?

Yes ! It would be nice to have a version without that ugly tag !

Also page 2 (the blue/green one) breaks the layout for 2 page images such as the map and the Chapter 6 image. Removing this page in the pdf and moving the watermark would be great.

Removing the page should be easy enough as there's no security on it, but I tried removing the watermark in Acrobat X Pro with no luck.

It would be fine if whomever imported it took the care to move the watermark into the margin.

Well it appears it's not actually a watermark, but 3 separate image objects in the PDF. Working on removing them from my copy now.

And I've gotten them removed from my copy. Wish I hadn't had to do it though.

Andrew - would you be willing to provide instructions on how to do this? Thanks!

First, open up the image in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

In the Edit-menu, select "Edit Text & Images" to go into edit mode.

 

Then for each water mark, select each of the four image elements, and press the Delete key to remove them

 

Repeat for all 116 pages... 

Why was this added? It feels  even weirded than the ads after every chapter in the strategy guide. Not as weird as the messed up names in the strategy guide, though.

What I did was use the Preflight option to put images, text and vector objects each on their own layer. Then I turned off the images and text layers and it was easy to use the edit object cursor the select everything, then ctrl+shifl+click to unselect the bottom bar if it was selected then just press delete.

Ugh, yeah, who thought that would be a good idea.  It's like we got a "sample" of the book with a watermark, please buy it to get a clean copy.  Horribly obtrusive watermarking.  If it HAS to be there, at least move it into a corner and not so far into the page.

I'll end up doing the work to remove it in Acrobat, annoying that it's there in the first place.

Thanks so much for the detailed instructions! Sadly I don't have Adobe Acrobat Pro - maybe I can download a trial to make this happen.

I'm assuming this was a requirement from Dark Horse's legal department and Obsidian lost that battle

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Aerothorn

Probably. PDF watermarks usually aren't that big of a deal. I buy lots of RPG books in PDF from Paizo.com and DriveThruRPG and they have a watermark at the top and bottom of the pages, but it's in the margin.  If Dark Horse had done the same it wouldn't be a problem.

Thanks so much for the detailed instructions! Sadly I don't have Adobe Acrobat Pro - maybe I can download a trial to make this happen.

 

I'm assuming this was a requirement from Dark Horse's legal department and Obsidian lost that battle

 

Download the trial for Acrobat from Adobe.

https://www.acrobat.com/en_us/free-trial-download.html?trackingid=KLBBQ

Another defect in the PDF is the useless bookmarks. /Volumes/vtrak04/PDF_Stamper/Incoming_PDFs/TPB_Samples/POELBK_FNL.pdf nested ad nauseam.

 

I'm guessing PDF_Stamper is whatever put the watermarks there. (TPB_Samples...? Maybe they think we're all going to put their book on The Pirate Bay.)

I'm guessing PDF_Stamper is whatever put the watermarks there. (TPB_Samples...? Maybe they think we're all going to put their book on The Pirate Bay.)

 

The Pillars Book? Anyway, the hilarious thing about the obnoxious watermarks is that if someone did decide to illegaly share the pdf, the watermarks do nothing to stop that and anyone sharing illegal copies of PDFs probably would remove them anyway, so it's just a nuissance for legit, paid customers like us, just like most forms of DRM.

How is this watermark even DRM? It doesn't stop me from sharing the file, literally the only thing it does is obstruct my view of a text I paid for. Who thought this was a good idea?

Yes, that's also quite crazy to me to see such watermark...

But, by seeing how guys take care of the untag soundtracks, I still have some hope to get officially a good pdf.

What I did was use the Preflight option to put images, text and vector objects each on their own layer. Then I turned off the images and text layers and it was easy to use the edit object cursor the select everything, then ctrl+shifl+click to unselect the bottom bar if it was selected then just press delete.

Awesome, thanks!

It worked! For those with Acrobat Pro, to get the Preflight dialogue box you need to go to View -> Tools -> Print Production, then the tools hotbar will have a Print Production option, containing Preflight. Making text, images and vectors a layer is a predefined option. You have to re-open the saved PDF, and through the layers hotbar (under bookmarks), hide text and image layers.