Mark a scan as a copy and black out data

In short: under the finished PDF on the a4norm page there is "Edit". It adds a note — say "KOPIE für Jobcenter", with the date added for you — makes the PDF black and white, fills fields the recipient does not need with solid black, and puts the pages in another order. All of it happens on your phone or computer; neither the scan nor the edited PDF is sent anywhere.

This is what it looks like on a made-up specimen card. On the left, the scan of both sides on an A4 sheet; on the right, the same sheet after "Edit":

The scanner's real output, not a mock-up: part of the A4 sheet with the card. The card is made up; the date is the day the example was made

How to open it

1. Make a scan as usual: the a4norm page, "Add photos", "Make the PDF". How to photograph a card's two sides is in the ID card guide.
2. Tap "Edit" under the finished PDF. A panel with the page opens. Short tips are folded under the ⓘ next to the title.
3. On a phone, tap ⤢ ("Full screen") for more room for the page. The buttons above the page, the page strip and "Done" stay; the note field and "Black and white" are in the normal panel. ⤡ or Escape takes you back.

It works on any scan: an ID card, a bank statement, a contract, a certificate.

A note with the date

The "Note" field is one line of up to 100 characters. a4norm adds today's date itself: "KOPIE für Jobcenter" becomes "KOPIE für Jobcenter · 25.09.2026".

• For an ID card or a passport the field already says "KOPIE". Add who the copy is for and why — that is what the German interior ministry's ID portal advises.
• For other documents the field is empty. Delete the text and there is no note at all, and no date either.
• Where it goes. Once on each page, next to the document, not over it: under the card, or above it when there is no room below. When the document fills the sheet, the note goes into a white strip across the lower half, or into the bottom margin. The type is small, two lines at most.

Black and white

The "Black and white" box turns the whole PDF into shades of grey. That is one more sign of a copy, and the file is usually smaller: 111 KB instead of 216 in this example.

Leave it off when a colour copy is asked for. For naturalisation, for instance, Kreis Herford asks for a "Farbkopie" of the passport.

Cover a field

1. Place a box. Tap "Cover a field" (on a narrow screen, the icon with a black bar in a frame) — a box appears in the middle of what you can see of the page. Or draw it straight away: hold a finger on the page until a circle appears, then drag. With a mouse, simply drag it out.
2. Adjust it. Tap a box to select it: the selected one gets corner handles. Drag it to move it, drag a corner to resize it; a tap on an empty part of the page deselects it. Remove a box with the × beside its right edge. From the keyboard: the arrows move it, Alt with the arrows resizes it, Delete removes it.
3. Zoom in when the field is small. Two fingers or the "+" and "−" buttons, up to 8×; the four-corners icon ("Whole page") goes back to the full page. One finger moves the page. A card is small on an A4 sheet, so for a card the panel opens already zoomed in.
4. Check it. The page in the panel is what goes into the PDF: the note, the shades of grey, the black fields. Only the ×s and the selected box's handles sit on top.

Why solid black and not blur. Blurred text can sometimes be read or reconstructed. A box in a4norm is filled solid black and becomes part of the page image: a4norm draws the page again, with the black rectangles in it, and puts only that image into the PDF. What was under the box is not in the file. That is the difference from a rectangle drawn in a PDF viewer, which often sits as a separate layer over the page and can be moved off it.

Only the PDF is covered. The original photo in your phone's gallery stays complete — delete it once you no longer need the copy.

What to cover:

• on an ID card or a passport — the access number (CAN), the document number, often the machine-readable zone; in detail, with the law, in the ID card guide;
• on a bank statement for the Jobcenter — only certain parts of outgoing payments, never income; the rules are in the guide to housing documents (KdU).

Page order

• Before the scan. Once the photos are gathered but the PDF is not made yet, press and hold a thumbnail and drag it to its place. The order of the photos also decides which sides of a card share a sheet.
• After the scan. With two pages or more, the "Edit" panel has a strip of thumbnails under the page. Drag a page to its new place. From the keyboard: Space picks a page up, the arrows move it, Space puts it down.

What you get

• "Done" makes a new PDF, and from then on the screen, "Send" and "Download PDF" all use it. It keeps the scan's name, with "_kopie" at the end when there is a note, or "_edit" when there is none.
• Tap the PDF to look at it full screen before you send it.
• "Change" under it opens the panel with the same settings.
• "Back to the original" brings back the scan without the edits. It was never gone: edits are always applied to the pages as scanned, never to already edited ones.
• Forgot a page? "Add photos" works after editing too: the note, black and white and the boxes are applied to the new PDF. One exception: when you add the back of a card whose front is already in, the card's sheet is made again, and the scanner asks you to place its boxes once more.

When a bank or a notary checks your identity under the anti-money-laundering act (GwG), they often need a full copy with no marks and nothing covered. Then tap "Back to the original" and send the scan unedited.

Where it is kept

On your device only. So that the result survives a reload, the browser keeps the last scan in its own local storage: the original photos, the scan, the edited PDF and the edit settings. "New scan" erases all of it. Neither the photo nor the PDF goes to my server or a cloud — you can check in airplane mode: editing works offline too.

In Telegram the same scanner opens in the bot @a4norm_bot with the "Scanner" button, and "Edit" is there as well. Only the finished PDF can pass through my server — if you tap "Send to chat"; the server does not keep it, but the copy then sits in your Telegram chat.

What this is not

• Not a certified copy. The word "KOPIE" certifies nothing.
• Not a promise the recipient will accept the file. Which data they need is up to them; if unsure, ask beforehand.
• Not text recognition. You cover the fields yourself — a4norm does not look for them.