You need to share a contract with a third party, but two pages have account numbers that shouldn't leave the company. The old workflow: print, black out with a marker, scan, send. Twenty minutes and the result looks awful.
Flint redact does it in 30 seconds and properly removes the data underneath.
Seconds 0–5: Drag in
Open Flint redact, drag your PDF. The document loads locally; data doesn't leave your machine. Five seconds to display the first page.
Navigate to the page containing the sensitive content.
Seconds 5–20: Draw redaction boxes
Click and drag to draw a black box over each piece of sensitive content — account numbers, names, financial figures. The box is drawn precisely over the text or image.
For a typical contract with a few sensitive numbers, expect 3–5 redactions, each taking 2–3 seconds.
Seconds 20–25: Apply redactions
Click apply. This is the critical step — applying actually removes the underlying content, not just covers it. The text underneath the box is permanently gone from the PDF.
A cheap 'redact' that only draws a black rectangle leaves the original text recoverable. Proper redaction destroys the content. Flint does the latter.
Seconds 25–30: Download
Download the redacted PDF. The visible result is a clean document with black boxes over the redacted areas. Underneath the boxes: nothing recoverable.
Rename to `<original>_redacted.pdf` to keep the unredacted version separate.
FAQ
Is a black box on a PDF the same as redaction?
No. Drawing a black box in an editor often leaves the text intact underneath, recoverable by copy-paste. Proper redaction removes the content from the file structure. Always verify by trying to copy text from the redacted area.
Can I redact images?
Yes — draw the box over the image and apply. The underlying image data is removed in the redacted output.
What about metadata?
Proper PDF redaction also strips metadata that might contain sensitive info (author name, original filename, edit history). Verify by opening Document Properties in any PDF viewer.
Should I keep an unredacted copy?
Yes — keep the original in a private folder. The redacted version is for distribution; the original is for your records.
Redaction is 30 seconds when done in the browser. Redact your next sensitive PDF in Flint and ditch the print-marker-scan cycle.