PDFPen respects the compression settings used in your PDFs, and so does not increase your file sizes. Of course Preview also re-compresses color and grayscale files, but in the case of files created by fScanX, the increase is only about 10%, while with files previously optimized by Acrobat, the increase is closer to 50%. So any change you make to a black-and-white document scanned with fScanX will result in a file that is typically 3-5 times larger. Preview re-compresses black-and-white documents with a poor choice of compression algorithm any time you make a change. Preview is free, installed on your Mac, has a straightforward interface, and, as far as I know, does not corrupt documents. And finally, it has good tools for finding and clearing confidential data in the metadata of the document. Acrobat also has a “search & redact” feature which is very convenient for quickly redacting all occurrences of given data. Prior to version X of Acrobat, redaction was problematic with text documents, in that the nearest word or words on the line below the text which you were redacting would disappear. The quality degradation from some of these optimizations will be the subject of a future article.) (Acrobat has so-called “optimization” features which are intended to decrease file size, and these do of course change compression settings, but you must invoke them explicitly. And of course that’s exactly what fScanX’s “Append” function does.Īcrobat respects the compression settings used in your PDFs, and so does not increase your file sizes. (The correct pages are actually written to the file, but the data structure that references those pages will have an incorrect page count.) This defect by itself is fatal and should disqualify Acrobat from your consideration.īy “structured in a certain way”, what I mean is “the result of using the most straightforward way of appending new pages to the end of an existing PDF document”. When Acrobat saves the file, it will either drop a page or add a “phantom” blank page. In documents which are structured in a certain way, re-ordering pages will result in a corrupted PDF. If you are using Acrobat, stop right now, read the rest of this review, and consider switching to another application. In addition to the high price and horrendous user interface with functions scattered around multiple tabs within multiple layers of dialogs with mixed metaphors accessed from a mish-mash of menus and toolbars and panels, Acrobat has a serious data-corrupting bug that is triggered by my uses. (Also: Proview, PDFGenius, PDF-Suite, & PDF Editor are listed as “N/R” (not rated) because they do not have the features I am rating, or do not provide a free trial.įor non-US visitors, the grades are “A” for best, “B” for superior, “C” for average, “D” for poor, “F” for failure.įor those who are impatient, the simple summary is: do not buy Adobe Acrobat, do buy PDFPen.Īdobe Acrobat® (versions 7, 8, 9, X & XI): F I will cover these actions for Adobe Acrobat, Preview, PDFPen, PDF Nomad, WonderShare, & PDF Studio, and assign each application a letter grade. I also occasionally need to redact private information from documents, using a true redaction function that actually removes text from the document rather then merely covering it up by a graphic overlay. Rotate pages: I need to rotate pages 90 degrees or flip them, without increasing document size.And I need to do so without increasing document size because of poor decisions as to what compression algorithms to use. Reorder pages: I need to reorder pages very easily, drag and drop for shorter documents, “cut and paste” for longer documents.Although I have neither the time nor expertise to write a thorough comparative review of PDF applications, my needs are extremely common and thus this review should be useful to many people.īy far my most common needs involve manipulating pages in scanned files (created using my fScanX® scanning software): This mini-review is based on the very small number of manipulations which I need to perform on PDFs.
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