You'd expect Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to be great because it comes from Adobe, the birthplace of the portable document format.
That said, editing recognized text is not as easy as editing text in a non-scanned document.Īmateurish and cluttered UI feels unfinished If it's the former, the application asks whether you want it to recognize the text on the page.Įven with large documents topping 400 pages, PDFpenPro handled text recognition seamlessly in a matter of minutes, making the text searchable and editable. When you open an existing PDF file in PDFpenPro, the application automatically detects whether the document you're working with is a scanned image or already contains selectable text. The application's OCR tools are rock-solid. Additionally, you can create PDFs from scratch, create or edit forms, and create tables of contents for your PDF documents.
With full PDF-document editing, you can make changes to text and replace images in PDF documents.
PDFpenPro is a standout for Mac users thanks to its solid features, not the least of which is an excellent OCR engine. (That version, PDFpen, is available for iOS devices as well as Macs.) It's also available in a less expensive version with fewer editing options. PDFpenPro is a macOS-only PDF editor that's been available for many years. Each of these apps have their strong points but ultimately there are too many quirks for these programs to rank them on our list of the best PDF editors. In addition to these recommendations, we also tested PDF Expert, PDFelement Pro and Sejda PDF Desktop Pro.
So too is PDFescape (for files up to 100 pages) and since this browser-based tool works with everything from Chrome to Firefox, it’s the best PDF annotation tool you can use for free on all of your devices. Preview is also easy to use and completely free. If you just want to annotate documents and have a Mac, then you don’t need to look further than Apple’s Preview app which is built-in and ships with macOS. PDF Candy also took the top spot on our list of the best free PDF editors. Its text-editing tools are a bit limited but this PDF editor excels at converting and creating files.
We like Acrobat Pro’s OCR capabilities, including how easy it is to edit scanned text.įor those who prefer free software, PDF Candy is worth a try. Well this is all great if you’ve got a Mac, what if you don’t? Windows users (or Mac users looking for an alternative) should turn to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC which also boasts an impressive tool set. The app also allows you to create PDFs, forms and tables of contents if you need other creation tools on top of editing and annotation capabilities. Comes with a PDF writer to create PDF or Image from any printable program, and PDF Tools to merge, split, reorder, encrypt, decrypt, rotate, crop, reformat, header, footer, watermark.If you need to edit documents on Mac, the best PDF editor is SmileOnMyMac’s PDFpenPro 11 thanks to its long list of features and outstanding capabilities in optical character recognition (OCR). More functions to create new blank page, optimize PDF document, extract text and image to files, and OCR to convert image into searchable PDF. Export PDF as Text, PNG, GIF, BMP, EPS, WMF, EMF, JPG and TIF. Select Original Image to Clipboard or to extract to file PDF Drawing to add line, rectangle, circle with border/filling styles PDF Barcode to Add QR Code, Data Matrix and PDF 417, POSTNET/PLANET, CODABAR, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5, EAN/UPC, and Code 128 Save the filled PDF locally with description and encryption. Support for international languages PDF Comment to insert stamp, text box, highlight, sticky note, popup, file attachment, video, link, drawings and pencil Select original texts to highlight, strikethrough, underline, squiggly, note, link, Google, and Clipboard. PDF Form Maker to create basic savable PDF form fields PDF Form Filler to fill-in and save interactive PDF forms to your computer for easy archiving, E-mailing or later printing PDF Filler to insert text, check and image. Insert text, check, image, barcode, comment, stamp and drawing.