Nowadays, PDF has become one of the most widely used file formats in daily life and work. Many people utilize this format to store documents, technical information, company materials, and personal data.
A normal PDF may also contain text and images at the same time to provide visual illustrations. However, to emphasize key visuals or aid understanding, people may need to highlight some images.
Have you had this similar need? If so, read on to learn why you should highlight PDF images and learn why and how to.
Why Do You Need to Highlight Images in PDF?
Highlighting is a type of visual annotation that lets you draw attention to specific areas of an image by adding shapes, inserting symbols, or using a drawing tool.
Why do people annotate images in PDF? Several reasons can lead people to do so. Here are the key reasons to highlight PDF images:
- Emphasize important visuals: Highlighting some specific parts of an image in a PDF can lead people to notice the important information that you want to express.
- Aid comprehension and learning: Highlighting helps students, researchers, or professionals to quickly locate key visuals and absorb information more effectively in a PDF file.
- Facilitate collaboration and feedback: Highlighting allows users to provide visual feedback or call attention to specific images in a PDF for discussion or revision during collaborative work.
- Simplify document review: Highlighting can assist users in finding and quickly reviewing key sections of a document without having to read it again by highlighting places for discussion about a PDF, action items, or outstanding activities.
- Enhance presentations: During a presentation, highlighting an image's visual content in a PDF can assist the audience in understanding the material by highlighting important details or points.
How to Highlight Image in PDF?
To emphasize image in PDF, you can use MiniTool PDF Editor, Adobe Acrobat, and SmallPDF. Here’s the detailed breakdown.
Method 1. Use MiniTool PDF Editor
MiniTool PDF Editor is a professional and reliable PDF editor that offers the Area Highlight feature to enable you to highlight any area of an image. Therefore, you can use this software to help you emphasize image in PDF.
To do that, you can follow the steps below:
Step 1. Download and install MiniTool PDF Editor on your computer.
MiniTool PDF EditorClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 2. Launch this app to enter its main interface. Click Open from the left panel, choose the target PDF, and click Open.

Step 3. Navigate to the Annotate tab, and click the down arrow under Area Highlight. Then, choose a color you like.

Step 4. Press the left mouse button and drag the cursor to highlight the image in the PDF.

Step 5. Repeat the steps above to highlight any additional images you want to emphasize.
Step 6. Once done, click MiniTool at the top-left corner and select Save from the drop-down menu to save all the changes.
Besides, you can also use MiniTool Partition Wizard’s Pencil feature to highlight the image that you want to emphasize. Here’s how to do that:
Step 1. Open the target PDF file in MiniTool PDF Editor.
Step 2. Go to the Annotate tab, and click the down arrow under Pencil. Then, set Weight, Line Color, and Opacity as you like.

Step 3. Press the left mouse button and drag your cursor to highlight the image that you want to stress.

Step 4. Repeat the above steps to highlight all the images that you want to stress. Once done, press the Ctrl and S keys to save the changes.
What’s more, MiniTool PDF Editor is an all-in-one tool that offers many features to help you edit PDF files and make conversion among different file formats. For instance, it can also help you create PDF with transparent background, compress PDF, convert PDF to PDF/A, etc.
Method 2. Use Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is one of the most popular PDF editors around the world. It offers various powerful features to help you view and edit PDF files, including highlighting content in PDF.
To use it to highlight images in a PDF, you can just use its Highlight feature. Here’s how to do that:
Step 1. Launch Adobe Acrobat on your computer, click Menu at the top-left corner and then select Open.

Step 3. Select the emphasis pen from the left toolbar, and choose Highlight. Also, you can click the color to have more choices for the highlight color, and click the hamburger icon to adjust the line thickness.

Step 4. Press the left mouse button and drag your cursor to highlight the image that you want to emphasize.

Step 5. Repeat the same steps to highlight all the images that you want to stress. Once done, press Ctrl + S to save all the changes.
Method 3. Use Smallpdf
If you don’t like to download or install any software on your computer, you can choose an online PDF editor to help you annotate images in PDF. There are various online tools on the Internet. You just need to choose one you like. Here, I take Smallpdf as an example:
Step 1. Navigate to the main interface of the Smallpdf official website, click Tools from the top toolbar, and then select Edit PDF.

Step 2. In the new page, click Choose Files to upload the target PDF file to this website.
Step 3. Click the pen icon and select Highlighter from the drop-down menu.

Step 4. Choose a proper color, set the line thickness, and adjust the line opacity. Then, highlight the image that you want to emphasize with your cursor.

In Conclusion
After reading this post, you may already know the answers. It introduces three detailed methods to highlight pictures in PDF files.
What’s more, if you encounter issues or have any suggestions while using MiniTool PDF Editor, you can contact us by sending an email to [email protected]. We will respond to you as soon as possible.