PDF is a great format: it enables you to preserve a document’s layout precisely when sharing it with others. The major downside, of course, is that you can’t really modify said PDF once it’s been created. You can open it, print it, even copy text from it, but should you wish to modify it, you have to go back to the original document and create a new PDF from there.
Of course, Adobe, the originator of the PDF format, lets you edit PDFs and even create interactive PDF forms with Acrobat Pro--but it's $449, which is out of reach for most people.
But since PDF is an open format, other, considerably cheaper apps also allow you to edit and create complex PDF files. For about $100, we have Nuance’s PDF Converter for Mac and Smile Software’s PDFpenPro. The features of these two are remarkably similar, but this isn't a surprise: Nuance’s software is actually powered by Smile’s technology.
First, let's take a look at what both can do.
PDF Converter lets you edit PDFs directly, or convert them to Office formats.
Aside from the basics, like reordering pages or even moving pages from one PDF to another, something Apple’s own Preview can pull off, these two PDF editors make it possible to select and replace text. If the same font is available on your computer, it’ll be used on the amended text, otherwise, a close equivalent will be substituted instead. The redact tool lets you erase or block out words, to conceal sensitive information.
If the PDF document is a draft, you can highlight text or use drawing tools to focus attention on parts that need to be changed. You can add as many text boxes as you need, and even choose how they line up with each other. Your editing abilities expand to the embedded images as well: you can distort or resize them, color-correct and apply filters to them, and even replace them with other images.
Both apps offer the ability to scan printed papers, and both also include an excellent OCR feature to turn those scanned images into editable text documents.
Advanced features found in both apps include a table-of-contents creator, and the ability to build an interactive document with checkboxes, menus, and text fields to fill in. It’s also apparently possible to turn a website into a PDF, but all the sites we tried, including www.maclife.com, didn’t result in anything useable and sometimes even crashed the app in question. Every other feature worked flawlessly.
So if both these apps work just as well as each other, which one should you choose?
Each app reserves a handful of unique features, and your decision will be swayed by which one you’ll find important to your workflow. For instance, while both apps can send PDFs to Evernote, Nuance’s PDF Converter also has its own online storage system called PaperPort. PDFpenPro however, allows you to save your work to iCloud, which has an additional advantage: you can then open those files with Smile’s PDFpen for iPad app ($14.99).
Another point in Smile’s favor are the excellent tutorials available on its website, in addition to a scaled down $60 version, called PDFpen (which lacks the ability to create tables of content, forms or convert websites to PDF). As its name suggests, Nuance's PDF Converter for Mac can convert PDF files into other formats, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, and WordPerfect.
The bottom line. Whichever app you end up choosing, the underlying technology is excellent and you’ll be able to edit existing PDFs and create interactive forms with ease. Just choose the one that has the additional features you require.
PDF Converter for Mac 3.0.1
Nuance Communications
http://www.nuance.com/products/pdf-converter-for-mac/index.htm
Price: $99.99
Requirements: Intel Mac, OS 10.6 or later. Some features require Internet access.
Pros: Edit and annotate PDFs. Create interactive forms. Scan documents and convert them to editable, searchable text. Online storage via Evernote and PaperPort. Converts PDFs to Office formats.
Cons: We had trouble converting websites into PDFs. No guides to accurately position text boxes or other objects. No spell check.
PDFpenPro 5.8.4
Smile
http://smilesoftware.com/PDFpenPro/index.html
Price: $99.95
Requirements: Intel Mac, OS 10.6 or later
Pros: Edit and annotate PDFs. Create interactive forms. Scan documents and convert them to editable, searchable text. Online storage via Evernote and iCloud. Seamless editing across Mac and iPad with PDFpen for iPad, $14.99 in the App Store.
Cons: We had trouble converting websites into PDFs. No guides to accurately position text boxes or other objects. No spell check.
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