Best pdf editor?
 

Any advice on a good pdf editor appreciated.
Thanks

Gavin

Adobe Acrobat Professional
Enfocus

Illustrator and Photoshop can edit PDFs too, in different ways. There's no single best PDF editor, each is best at different things. Are you a consumer or prepress. Some can't live without Enfocus products but the purpose of those products is lost on ordinary consumers.

The question is what you want to do with PDF. Wich kind of PDF files do you want to edit? How do you want to edit them?

You need to be more specific.

L

Thanks for the input here.

What I have are "forms". i.e. application forms for insurance etc. I need to impress my company logo on them. I have also been given an example Terms of Business statement and I need to excise the company name on it and input my company name. Also, lengthy tracts of text need to be removed that don't apply.

So, text editing maybe the best summary.
TIA
Gavin

Illustrator would be the best bet to add your company logo.

If you have to do that much rework, using any PDF editor is going to be a pain due to line wrap, font, and other issues of the PDF format which was intended to be more of a "final output" print-like format rather than an editable document format. If at all possible, go get the original source files, edit those, and re-generate the PDFs. You'll have a lot more hair left afterwards.

I have found that I still use Acrobat 5. I found Acrobat 8 Professional does not edit some files that Acrobat 5 can edit. So... I use both.

Does anyone know of a free .pdf editor that will allow you to add a simple annotation like preview lets you do? This feature of preview is only in the newer versions, and we have some people running on panther here still. All they need to do is add simple little labels to sections of the .pdf files. I've seen some shareware ones that look decent, but does anyone know of a free app that can let you do this?

Can't you just copy Preview.app from one of the new computers to the old ones or Does Preview.app require Tiger?

Some might say that using your first post on this board to dig up an ancient thread, only to recommend Windows-only software, could be considered spamming.

A little-known beta app called Proview (macdeveloper.net) is a PDF editor.

Which has now been released:

http://www.coherentpdf.com/proview.html

Disclaimer: I wrote it - I hope responding to this third-party post isn't considered spamming.

I'm going to check out macdeveloper (coherent) assuming it's for Mac (if that's obvious by the link). I don't care if your post is for your own software coherentgraphics - I can't find a Mac software that matches up well with the one I use on my PC. I use the CadKas pdf editor on my Vista computer and love it but I have never found a similar thing for Mac that I like. Like the original poster way back here, most of what I do is just adding or removing graphics/logos (and in some cases my signature as a graphic to sign documents electronically). When I got that software I could not find anything else out there for a good price (to me under $100 is a deal). It has worked great for everything I've ever needed it to do (I also add/delete pages and rearrange their order in addition to text editing and graphics/logo add/delete).

At the time I got the Cadkas software (three years ago?) I only had PCs but since then got my first Mac in probably 15 years or more. I still use Vista on my Mac as well using Parallels (not the newest version, though, 4.0 I think) and it works well but I don't always keep that running because anything with a Microsoft OS is a memory hog. If it's running I can immediately use the Cadkas pdf editor, but if not I have to start that up first or go to the PC if I'm not on it already. I don't need whatever the Adobe version of the full-on software would give (nor can I spend the $500 or $600 I think it is last I checked).

This may be an old thread but it still shows up high on my search to find user reviews on pdf editor software so anyone that know something that is reasonably priced for Mac that is as easy to use and does all that the CadKas pdf editor software does on a Microsoft OS I would appreciate a recommendation - there are far fewer reviews on Mac OS software for this than Microsoft OS software. $100 is my upper limit on pricing.

coherentgraphics, I just checked out your new release but I can't see that it allows editing of existing text? Am I just missing that on your website? That's been one of the things that was crucial to me when I picked Cadkas for my Microsoft OS because I saw some other pdf editors that didn't allow that and only allowed adding new text (or making me delete all that was there and start over re-writing it all if I wanted to effectively just edit the existing). I know I could just download your trial but I don't really want to do that for nothing if that is not a feature you have. Thanks.

Gabriel,

We don't currently support editing of existing text.

Here's why it's a hard (but not impossible) problem in general:

1) The text is often not organised into lines and paragraphs as such - the PDF just specifies that certain letters from a font should be painted at certain positions on the screen - they may not even be painted in order. So, to edit like a word-processor, you first have to attempt to reconstruct the lines.

2) Sometimes, if a font has been 'subset', it contains only certain characters e.g if the title was the only text in a font - so the other characters may not be available in the font - making it impossible to edit.

Incidentally, I've just released a new version of Proview today, which you can get here. It has visual crop, a new page tab in the inspector, and is faster and more polished. It's a free upgrade for existing cutomers.

http://www.coherentpdf.com/proview.html

Best PDF Editor
 

I will recommend you one of the best PDF editing software that can create, view and edit any PDF file. You can also converts Microsoft Word Document to PDF, Excel-sheet to PDF, PowerPoint to PDF and Web-Pages to PDF, also PDF to Doc/image etc

By using editing feature you can edit/add text, change font style/size/color, move/resize images, Add/move/delete images and Add/remove PDF pages etc

You can free download scanned copy of Classic PDF Editing software from C.Net downloads here.

Or read more about PDF editing software.

I am using this software from past few months and completely satisfied.

Don't forget to come back to share your views.

Thanks

That's Windows software. Spam much?

Editing of PDFs will always be more limited than using the original document from which the PDF files was created. You may be able to add a graphic, or a watermark text, or make minor corrections to text, but don't expect to reflow paragraphs or similar. Having said that, Preview has a lot of features for cropping, adding, deleting or rearranging of pages, and much more.

Yes, editing PDF file is limited than using the original document from which the PDF file was created, same in case with Adobe Acrobat X Pro. Adobe Acrobat also limited to line by line editing.

You can breaks these limits smartly, it’s all depend on you how smartly utilize. If you need minor or line by line changes in PDF document then you can edit in classic PDF editor but in case you need major changes or re-flow paragraphs, you need to convert PDF to Word and then makes major changes. Once done re-convert Word to PDF by using classic PDF editor.
I will recommend you first try this software, then come back and share your views.

Thanks

As benwiggy noted, the software you keep recommending is for computers running Windows. This is a forum for Mac OS X users. While some people may also be running Windows, I doubt they want to reboot into Windows or open virtualization software when there are Mac-based options available.

This assumes that the original PDF is in a layout that Word can adequately replicate.
Anything produced in InDesign, Quark XPress, Pages, -- even Excel or Numbers -- or more specialised tools like music notation, accounting software, drawing packages, and many others: these app can all produce output that is far beyond the capabilities of Word.

Editing PDFs can mean many things: colour correction, text editing, adjustment of print attributes, resizing, page re-ordering, adding watermark text or image, form filling, adding of elements like bookmarks, hyperlinks, media files; also Javascript, etc, etc, etc.

There are several different tools available to achieve these various tasks, depending on what you want.

However, any "serious" reforming of the content or layout would be best served by going back to the original artwork files.

Try this pdf editor. It gives you an opportunity to edit and save all PDF files, without using doPDF or any other print-emulation programms.

Windows software in an Apple-focused forum? That's usually spam.

Is it really, when you consider that these machines also run Windows? Recommending Windows applications may also be as valid as recommending Apple software unless there is a particular application OS specification for the problem.

I understand what you're saying here, but nothing in this thread suggests someone is looking for a Windows-based solution. The references to Windows solutions in this thread originate with people registering and recommending them, and those posts showed no acknowledgement of the costs and inconveniences associated with Windows software being run on a Mac. More broadly, where do we draw the line? Should we be recommending Linux options when applicable even though a poster says, "I'm looking to do X on my new iMac"?

Personally, I use the site name as my primary guide, and to me that clearly suggests Mac-focused solutions until someone specifies otherwise. I wouldn't visit the Windows 7 Hints forum and suggest the Mac-only Quicksilver as an option for someone since there's a chance they are running Windows on a Mac.

Admittedly, I'm just one person with an opinion and an approach, and I'm not trying to suggest I am the one correctly assessing these considerations. I've tried to use posters who've been here longer than me as my guide, along with the forum rules, but that doesn't mean I'm doing so perfectly. So I'm open to hearing other nuances I may be missing and approaches worth adopting, both specific to this thread and to these forums in general.

Adobe Pro is expensive but good.
When making small corrections/edits I prefer using Photoshop. Save it as a eps file and then use Adobe Distiller to compress the file to a PDF.