.pdf creation and editing?

alaskaflyer

alaskaflyer

Final Approach
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Alaskaflyer
Anyone have a favorite alternative to the full version of Adobe Acrobat? Doesn't need to be free, but should be significantly cheaper...

I'm looking for something beyond a simple virtual printer such as cutePDF.
 
Well, OpenOffice allows you to save your files as PDFs. Don't know if that's what you're looking for. What features in particular interest you?
 
Solid PDF Printer does pretty well but it's $69.95, now. It was only $29.95 not all that long ago.

I imagine some prices are going up because Adobe is raising its prices. Even Adobe's educational pricing is going nuts.
 
gprellwitz said:
Well, OpenOffice allows you to save your files as PDFs. Don't know if that's what you're looking for. What features in particular interest you?
Click to expand...

I do use OpenOffice already (when I wiped my hard drive last weekend I didn't even reload my copy of MS Office - I'm done) but I need the ability to:

1. Create simple .pdf fillable forms
2. Create comments or notes
3. Merge, unmerge, and reorder pages

All other features are optional but the above three are mandatory.
 
alaskaflyer said:
Anyone have a favorite alternative to the full version of Adobe Acrobat? Doesn't need to be free, but should be significantly cheaper...

I'm looking for something beyond a simple virtual printer such as cutePDF.
Click to expand...


I have used cutePDF writer for years and thought that if I needed a PDF editor I'd try the one that they sell. You can try it for free. If you do, please post your opinion of their product.

http://www.cutepdf.com/
 
I've used PDF995 and had no complaints. It's free with a nag screen on each print. Less that 20 bucks without it.
 
OK, Dammit. I have typed this helpful and descriptive post twice, and Firefox has crashed both times right before I posted it. Time for a virus scan, or perhaps a reload. Grrrr!

---

I use PDF Converter Pro, by Nuance. It is excellent software, robust and effective, and does everything that full Acrobat does except control a scanner - but most scanners have independent PDF-creation, so this has not proven to be a problem for us.

You can create PDFs, edit them, make forms, all kinds of stuff. In addition, it has an excellent OCR engine which will convert a PDF into a word processor file if you like.

Readily available at Nuance's web site for $99.00, or for less with a little aggressive shopping. I happily bought a copy for each machine at my office, and recommend it without hesitation.

http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/professional/

Here's best deal I found in a hurry: ($69.99 plus shipping) http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/details.asp?productID=3211&cid=71

Nuance also is a real software company, with, like, tech support and stuff...

Spike says, "Chack it out."
 
If all you're doing is looking to create PDFs out of an application you cannot beat:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Free, open-source, and very effective.

As far as editing PDFs..I have no idea.. I've never found anything that I liked, it was basically always a PITA.
 
Does anyone have a recommendation for a simple and free program that will enable merging of PDF files?
 
Creating PDF docs, there are lots for free. Modifying and merging, free gets tougher.

Good reviews for this one, but I have never used myself...

http://www.exp-systems.com/

PDF Redirect
 
If you have a MAC you can print to pdf with any application.
 
Diana said:
Does anyone have a recommendation for a simple and free program that will enable merging of PDF files?
Click to expand...
Diana, they change format from version to version, so I finally keeled and bought the whole program, 3 copies.

Your scans (500 kb each) worked out to 23 kb each page combined.

They (Adobe) ARE proud of their stuff.
 
bbchien said:
Diana, they change format from version to version, so I finally keeled and bought the whole program, 3 copies.

Your scans (500 kb each) worked out to 23 kb each page combined.

They (Adobe) ARE proud of their stuff.
Click to expand...

BTDT, got the scars (and receipts).

Best less-costly alternative in paid programs is Nuance's PDF Converter Pro. Costs a lot less than Adobe's.
 
Eh? The PDF format hasn't changed in decades. There are extensions within the format that your reader (or encoder) may not know about but the format is unchanged.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. :)

bbchien said:
Diana, they change format from version to version, so I finally keeled and bought the whole program, 3 copies.

Your scans (500 kb each) worked out to 23 kb each page combined.
Click to expand...

I tried to figure out how you did that and realized I couldn't. Hopefully I will only need to do that once a year. :)
 
Try as I might, I've never found anything that works as well as Acrobat. Happily for me, it's now included in my Adobe CS subscription, along with Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Acrobat, Premiere... Actually, I'm not sure there's anything Adobe makes that's not included in my subscription.

I'm not even sure what some of the software I'm entitled to download and use does, to be quite honest. But if I ever need it, I have it.

I've gotten to the point that I advise people who are thinking about buying any Adobe product to check out the subscriptions. If you use even two or three of the products, the subscription's likely to be a better deal.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Try as I might, I've never found anything that works as well as Acrobat. Happily for me, it's now included in my Adobe CS subscription, along with Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Acrobat, Premiere... Actually, I'm not sure there's anything Adobe makes that's not included in my subscription.

I'm not even sure what some of the software I'm entitled to download and use does, to be quite honest. But if I ever need it, I have it.

I've gotten to the point that I advise people who are thinking about buying any Adobe product to check out the subscriptions. If you use even two or three of the products, the subscription's likely to be a better deal.

-Rich
Click to expand...
They're basically eliminating one's ability to do anything but the subscriptions.
 
Actually, I find the "creative cloud" to be a decent value. A full of CS license was like $6K before. Now you can get all the adobe you can eat for $50/mo or whatever.

I actually use Ps, Dw, Ai a lot and I've used some of the video stuff as well.

However, all this is overkill if you just want to turn a word document into PDF or whatever. All you need is a distiller. This is essentially a print driver that writes PDF. These are available for free or small $ and if you're running any recent memory OS/X on the MAC (leopoard or later), it's built in anyhow.
 
flyingron said:
However, all this is overkill if you just want to turn a word document into PDF or whatever. All you need is a distiller. This is essentially a print driver that writes PDF. These are available for free or small $ and if you're running any recent memory OS/X on the MAC (leopoard or later), it's built in anyhow.
Click to expand...
You don't need anything to save a Word document as a PDF. You just "save as" PDF. Or is this not what you are talking about?
 
Everskyward said:
You don't need anything to save a Word document as a PDF. You just "save as" PDF. Or is this not what you are talking about?
Click to expand...

Even if Word didn't support it (older versions do not), the distiller will convert anything that's printable into a PDF. The truth of the matter is that there's a lot of commonality between PDF and PostScript anyhow.
 
flyingron said:
Actually, I find the "creative cloud" to be a decent value. A full of CS license was like $6K before. Now you can get all the adobe you can eat for $50/mo or whatever.

I actually use Ps, Dw, Ai a lot and I've used some of the video stuff as well.

However, all this is overkill if you just want to turn a word document into PDF or whatever. All you need is a distiller. This is essentially a print driver that writes PDF. These are available for free or small $ and if you're running any recent memory OS/X on the MAC (leopoard or later), it's built in anyhow.
Click to expand...

It's gone down a lot since they first introduced it, and Adobe always applies the reductions to existing subscriptions. I think I pay $29.99 a month plus tax now, which is really inexpensive compared to the purchase model, especially considering that you don't have to worry about the updates / upgrades any more.

-Rich
 
I'm on Linux, and have played around briefly with Scribus and PDFEdit.

As I recall, Scribus can create PDFs from scratch but not edit existing ones. PDFEdit (Linux only?) can create and edit, but I think the editing functionality gets poor reviews.
 
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