OK. So I've got a manual from a company that I'm doing some work for. It's a
pdf file, nice quality images. I want to combine a few of the images, to
create composite pages that I can print out tiled across four sheets. I
don't have a problem with the printing. The pdf viewer that I'm using at the
moment, allows for that, and I do it all the time to get printouts of
schematics up to a sensible size.

Where I am having trouble, is finding some software that will do a simple
(erasure) edit of part of a page. A 'for instance', then. One of the pages
shows a layout of one of the boards. I want to print it in the middle of a
4-sheet tile set, with a clear surround on all four sides so that I can
either hand annotate some of the things on it, or add in images from
elsewhere in the document. Trouble is, there's a bloody great header all
across the top of the page, and a footer at the bottom, so I want to either
(preferably) 'delete' these from the page, leaving just the board image, or
alternately, select the board image from the page, in its pdf format, and
drop it elsewhere, still in its full-res pdf format, without going through
any in-between conversions to bitmap or whatever, as happens if you use a
snapshot tool to dump it to the clipboard.

You would have thought it would be easy to find a piece of freeware that
could do a 'select - edit - cut' operation on a page, but I'm buggered if I
can find one. There are loads of packages out there that claim to be pdf
editors with endless features, and they do have, but none seem to have just
simple tools to allow me to do what I want.

I used to have a fully registered version of Acrobat, and I'm sure that
allowed you to do it, but I am no longer able to use it, because when I
upgraded my OS to Win 7, it was no longer compatible, and there was no route
within Adobe, to upgrade an existing installation.

So, does anyone know of a SIMPLE piece of free software, that will
definitely allow me to work on this document 'in situ' and preferably by
just being able to define and select an area and then erase it, or define
and select an area then copy and paste it ?

Arfa