Adobe Acrobat Standard is the basic version of their PDF editor. It lets you perform basic functions with a PDF (view, create, convert, edit, add images to PDF, combine documents, fill forms, etc.).
PDF Pro is a no nonsense, all-in-one PDF editor that was made to be easy to use, intuitive, powerful, and affordable. With PDF Pro, you can easily and instantly create, edit, convert, merge, OCR, batch process, and more.
Anyone that's used Microsoft Office or Google suite will feel right at home with PDF Pro's layout. The tools and buttons are neatly organized and clearly labeled, so you can quickly and instantly find the tool you're looking for.
PDF Pro now offers Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to instantly recognize text within images, scanned documents, downloaded PDF files, and more. So, you can edit, search, and interact with any PDF or document!
Adobe Acrobat was created by Adobe (who invented the PDF format), so their PDF editor tends to have the newest and most powerful editing features. But it has a steep price, steep learning curve, and slow, bloated software program as a result.
PDF Pro has all the basic editing functions that are available in Acrobat Standard. But it also offers several advanced editing options such as OCR, Bates numbering, adding custom stamps, creating interactive PDFs and fillable forms, and measurement tools.
Meanwhile PDF Pro gives you more editing tools than Acrobat Standard, at a price that's more affordable than both versions of Adobe Acrobat. Truly more bang for your buck.
But, for the average person, PDF Pro's powerful editing tools, advanced features, different license options and affordable price have everything they need and more, while keeping things simple.
There's a reason why Acrobat is our pick for best PDF editor - and it's not just because it's the original PDF software. The tool is easy to use, and packed with just about every tool needed to create, edit, share, sign, and fill PDF files. If you're a PDF power-user, it's an excellent app. But it's not for everyone.
Whether you're trying to avoid Adobe's subscription plans, you need a simpler tool, or you need extra features, you'll find plenty of the best alternatives to Acrobat available. And we tested out the top substitutes including the best free PDF editors to help you choose the right app. During our review process, we've looked at how each app compares to Acrobat, exploring the PDF editing experience to testing out essential extras like form-filling, OCR, and eSignatures. We've also looked at value for money and pricing, with a range of subscription, perpetual license, and free Acrobat alternatives to choose.
When we tried out the product, we found it featured an impressive toolkit that compares favorably with Adobe Acrobat. The interface and experience make using the software incredibly simple and easy - a factor the sometimes overwhelming Acrobat struggles to boast.
Other tools to let you make changes to existing PDF documents, and even create one from scratch. You have a lot of tools at your disposal, including various ways to make annotations, leaving instructions for colleagues to follow.
Tools for PDF creation, compressing, merging, and converting are all present and results are grand. Extras like OCR and eSign are well-implemented. The interface is clean and fresh and emphasizes productivity - you can quickly find what you need and what to do.
Foxit PDF Editor is a stellar substitute for Adobe Acrobat. Like Adobe, Foxit has been offering PDF tools for decades, and users can take confidence from the many high-profile endorsements proudly listed on the Foxit site, with the likes of Amazon, Google, Dell, and Intel among them.
The company's best Adobe Acrobat alternative, Foxit PDF Editor, offers dozens of useful features. This includes watermarking, adding headers and footers, tailoring password permissions, creating templates, and converting other documents to PDFs. One neat feature is being able to drag files of other formats - such as converting Excel to PDF or using the PowerPoint to PDF converter.
In our Foxit PDF Editor review, we felt it might not offer enough value to casual users, but the multi-platform PDF editor app was great for businesses who regularly need to manipulate, edit, redact, annotate, and alter PDF documents.
Indeed, the redaction tools were a special highlight for us. We were impressed with how easily they worked, thoroughly scrubbing sensitive data from documents .The feature is a boon for compliant-conscious teams who understand the importance of adhering to global data laws.
Unlike many of the best Acrobat alternatives, EaseUS has a free, but limited version available alongside the Pro version. This works great in a pinch, but it restricted in many ways - not least adding a watermark to your documents. The Pro version opens up the software, however.
A wide range of editing tools include the ability to highlight parts of the PDF and add notes, redact sensitive information, extract or rearrange pages, and merge documents. Being able to draw directly onto the PDF is also useful for those who are using the software on iPad and have an Apple Pencil.
PDF Architect, from pdfforge, offers a range of PDF packages that rival Adobe Acrobat. The free plan includes basic PDF creation for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs, and the ability to merge, move, and delete pages and files.
You can make basic edits using a PDF reader, many of which are available as free versions. You'll also find plenty of PDF editors that have fewer features than Acrobat, making them the ideal choice for casual users or those who don't need anything too complex. If you need to make more in-depth edits, batch process files, or convert between file types, then a fully-fledged PDF editor is the best choice for you.
Also consider cost. Adobe Acrobat is only available as a subscription service - but alternatives to Acrobat are available on subscription and perpetual license (so you buy it once and own it forever). Some are even available free of charge.
We've tested hundreds of document creation and editing tools, including the best PDF readers for Windows , the best PDF readers for Mac, and even feature-focused programs like the the best PDF compressors and best PDF merger software. So, when it comes to alternatives to Acrobat, we know what to look out for and what to avoid.
To test the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives, we downloaded and installed each piece of software to give you a first-hand opinion based on extensive experience with every kind of PDF editing tool, from feature-rich software for businesses to simple PDF viewers.
Our research looked at operating system compatibility, system requirements, and real-world performance when working with large files. We explored each program's features, noting any significant additions and omissions compared to Adobe Acrobat. We also investigated the price, payment models, and free versions (where available) for each Adobe Acrobat alternative. Finally, we looked at the support services and documentation offered by each developer as we feel it's a key part of the overall user experience.
I can't be the only person who imagined the office of the future, free from the confines of the eight and a half by eleven sheet (or A4, for my international friends), would have long since arrived. Instead, we've managed to land in an intermediate state of not paperless, but less paper.
Between a trusty scanner, email and various other communication tools, and getting really good at organizing my digital archives, I'm not totally unhappy with where we are today. And I do occasionally admit to reading a paper book, sending a postcard, or (gasp) printing something off to give to someone else.
Until the world moves a little further from paper, print-ready file formats will continue to permeate our digital landscape as well. And, love it or hate it, PDF, the "portable document format," seems to be the go-to format for creating and sharing print-ready files, as well as archiving files that originated as print.
For years, the only name in the game for working with PDF documents was Adobe Acrobat, whether in the form of their free reader edition or one of their paid editions for PDF creation and editing. But today, there are numerous open source PDF applications which have chipped away at this market dominance. And for Linux users like me, a proprietary application that only runs on Windows or Mac isn't an option anyway.
Since PDF files are used in so many different situations for so many different kinds of purposes, you may need to shop around to find the open source alternative to Adobe Acrobat that meets your exact needs. Here are some tools I enjoy.
For reading PDFs, these days many people get by without having to use an external application at all. Both Firefox and Chromium, the open source version of Google's Chrome browser, come bundled with in-browser PDF readers, so an external plugin is no longer necessary for most users.
For downloaded files, users of GNOME-based Linux distributions have Evince (or Atril on the GNOME 2 fork, MATE), a powerful PDF reader that handles most documents quickly and with ease. Evince has a Windows port as well, although Windows users may also want to check out the GPLv3-licensed SumatraPDF as an alternative. KDE's Okular serves as the PDF reader for the Plasma Desktop. All of these have the ability to complete PDF forms, view and make comments, search for text, select text, and so on.
Personally, LibreOffice's export functionality ends up being the source of 95% of the PDFs I create that weren't built for me by a web application. Scribus, Inkscape, and GIMP all support native PDF export, too, so no matter what kind of document you need to make -- a complex layout, formatted text, vector or raster image, or some combination -- there's an open source application that meets your needs.
For practically every other application, the CUPS printing system does an excellent job of outputting documents as PDF, because printers and PDFs both rely on PostScript to represent data on page (whether the page is digital or physical).
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