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 die Krankenkasse", with the date added for you — makes the PDF black and white, fills fields the recipient does not need with solid black, places your signature, erases a spot or a shadow, cuts one part out of a page, rotates a page, puts the pages in another order and removes a page. 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 or PDF" (on Android, "Choose 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, with four tabs under it, each with its tools: "Fill in" (Text, Date, Tick, By hand, Signature), "Remove" (Black out, Eraser), "Page" (Crop, Corners, Rotate, Filter, Format) and "Output" (Colour, Note, File size). The first time, a tool says in one short line what to do.
3. On a phone, tap ⤢ ("Full screen") for more room for the page. ⤡ 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

"Output" → "Note" opens the "Note on the copy" field: one line of up to 100 characters. It is not the file's name: the text is printed on the page itself. A4Norm adds today's date itself: "KOPIE für die Krankenkasse" becomes "KOPIE für die Krankenkasse · 25.09.2026". Once you have typed it, the page shows the note larger and lights it up for a moment.

• 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 — or tap the × at the right end of the field — 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.
• Move it, make it larger. On the page the note is an object, like a signature. Tap it to select it and drag it somewhere else; pull a corner and the letters grow or shrink, their shape kept. The note moves on each page on its own; where you leave it alone, it places itself next to the document. From the keyboard: Tab to the note, the arrow keys move it, Alt with the arrow keys resizes it.

Black and white

Under "Output" → "Colour", "Black and white" 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.

Black out

1. Place a box. In "Remove", tap "Black out" — 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).

A signature

1. Sign once. In "Fill in", tap "Signature". A white sheet with a line opens over the whole screen: sign with a finger, a stylus or the mouse, in blue or black. On a phone there is more room with the phone turned sideways. "Save" keeps the signature and puts it on the page.
2. Place it again. From then on the same button puts the saved signature on the page you are looking at — on its signature line if the page has one (the lowest, on the right), otherwise in the lower right part of the sheet, about 5.5 cm wide. As many times and on as many pages as you need.
3. Adjust it. Like a box: drag it to move it, drag a corner to resize it — its shape stays. The selected signature has a × and a blue/black switch.
4. Draw it again or delete it. The small arrow next to "Signature". When you draw it again and the document already has signatures, the scanner asks whether to replace them all with the new one.

In black and white a blue signature turns dark grey.

Eraser

For a spot, a shadow, a finger at the edge or a bent corner left on the finished page.

1. Turn the eraser on. In "Remove", tap "Eraser". While it is on, one finger or the mouse paints on the page, and two fingers zoom and move it.
2. How it erases. The arrow beside "Eraser" chooses: "White" (on at first) paints the spot white, "Match background" fills it with the colour of the paper around it, for a coloured background. "White rectangle": drag out a frame, everything in it turns white, for large areas. "Remove shadow behind text": drag a frame over the line, the grey shadow goes, the writing stays. The choice is remembered.
3. Paint over it. The brush is round, 5 mm on the sheet; the circle shows its size. What you paint shows see-through. Once you let go, the spot turns white or fills with the colour of the paper around it — usually within a tenth of a second.
4. Paint over the whole thing, shadow included. Whatever the brush only half covers, "Match background" carries on into the fill, and a grey trace stays. One stroke too many is better than an edge left out.
5. Made a mistake? The round buttons at the bottom right under the page take back the last stroke (↶) or all erasing on this page (↺). The same button or the Escape key turns the eraser off.

The eraser does not redraw what was under the spot — no text, no pattern, only white or the colour of the paper around it. So it is for debris on empty parts of the page, not for correcting text. Data the recipient must not see goes under "Black out": a black box shows that something is covered.

Crop

What is inside the frame is cut out and placed in the middle of a clean A4 sheet at the same size, not enlarged: an ID card on the copy stays its real size. Everything outside the frame is left out of the PDF.

1. Turn the frame on. In "Page", tap "Crop". A frame around the whole sheet appears over the page.
2. Drag an edge or a corner in to the document. Everything outside the frame is dimmed. To move the whole frame, drag it from inside: its size stays the same.
3. Turn "Crop" off. The page now looks as it will in the PDF: the part you cut out in the middle of the sheet. You can cover a field, sign or erase a spot right on it.
4. "Reset" puts the frame back around the whole sheet. From the keyboard: Tab to the frame or one of its edges, the arrows move it, faster with Shift.

Each page has its own frame. On a page turned on its side, the part you cut out goes in the middle of a landscape sheet.

Document corners

If the scanner found the sheet in the wrong place — cut off an edge or took in some desk — tap "Corners" in "Page". The original photo opens with the corners it found.

1. Drag a corner to the document's edge. A magnifier with a cross above your finger shows where it lands.
2. Need it closer? Zoom in with two fingers and drag the corner up close. One finger away from the corners moves the photo.
3. "Apply" — the page is made again exactly from these corners. "Reset to automatic" brings back the corners the scanner found.

If the page already has covered fields, a signature, erasing or a crop, new corners remove them: the page lies differently, and a box would no longer sit where it belongs. You are warned before "Apply" and can "Undo" after. Changing the filter removes nothing. The two sides of a card on one sheet have no corners.

Rotate

The scanner does not turn pages by itself: each one stays as it was shot. If a page came out sideways or upside down, tap "Rotate" in "Edit" → "Page". Each tap turns the page a quarter turn clockwise, the fourth puts it back as made; three taps are the same as one counterclockwise. The new PDF is made on "Done". Covered fields, erasing and the crop turn with the page; a signature and the note stay upright. A page turned on its side is a landscape A4 sheet in the PDF.

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.
• A page you do not need. The × on a thumbnail takes the page out of the PDF with everything on it; "Undo" right after brings it back. The last page stays.

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.
• The file's name is under the PDF: A4Norm and the date, such as A4Norm_2026-09-28.pdf, with the time as well for a second scan on the same day. A tap on the name (or "More" → "Rename the file") renames it, and ".pdf" is added for you; Enter saves, Escape cancels. The PDF is downloaded, shared and sent to the chat under that name, and after "Done" it stays yours. An empty field brings back the scan's name.
• Tap the PDF to look at it full screen before you send it.
• "Edit" opens the panel again with the same settings.
• "More" → "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? "More photos" under the finished PDF 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 redo its boxes, signatures, erasing, crop and rotation.

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 "More" → "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, the edit settings and the file's name if you changed it. "New scan" erases all of it. The saved signature is kept apart from the scan, also only in this browser, until you choose "Delete saved signature". 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.
• Not a digital signature. The signature is drawn into the page like ink on paper. Whether a signed scan is enough is up to the recipient.