Flatten PDF

A filled-in PDF form can still be edited by anyone who opens it, and comments or stamps can be moved or deleted. Flattening paints those layers into the page itself: form answers stay visible but the fields disappear, and annotations become part of the page. Use it before submitting a final form, sending a signed or stamped document, or printing a file whose fields do not print properly. Everything runs in your browser.

How to use this tool

1. Choose one or more PDFs.
2. Pick what to flatten: form fields only, fields plus annotations, or everything (each page becomes an image).
3. Decide whether links should stay clickable.
4. For "everything", pick the resolution and image type.
5. Download the flattened PDF.

Formula

Each field or annotation has a stored picture of itself (its appearance stream) with a bounding box. The tool transforms that box onto the item's rectangle on the page — scale = rectangle size ÷ box size — paints it into the page content and then removes the interactive item.

Fields without a stored picture get one drawn first. The "everything" mode renders each page at the chosen resolution, so a 300 dpi A4 page is 2480 × 3508 pixels.

Example

A 4-page application form with 18 filled fields and a yellow highlight comment, flattened with "Form fields and annotations", gives a PDF whose answers and highlight look identical but can no longer be changed: the result shows 18 fields and 1 annotation flattened, and the file is often slightly smaller because the form structure is gone.