MacLife UK – August 2019

All image rights: Smile Software.

While every Mac can make simple PDFs,

editing and interacting with complex PDF

documents can be an expensive exercise:

Adobe’s Acrobat Pro CC is $14.99 a month.

If you’re working in an environment that

already subscribes to Adobe’s Creative Cloud

you’ll have the Acrobat app already, but if

not you should try the trial of PDFpen Ľrst.

At $74.95 it’s packed with powerful editing

features. It can extract and edit text, digitally

sign documents, adjust images, scan and

OCR documents, and redact sensitive

information. There’s also a Pro version at

$124.95 that adds form creation, website

conversion, Portfolio document creation, and

the ability to correct typos in the OCR text

layer. PDFpen Pro can also OCR horizontal

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean documents.

And the latest version brings some

welcome improvements.

Split View enables you to work with

multiple bits of the same document at the

same time. It works really well, with real–

time updates and eļective navigation: click

PDFpen

Adobe Acrobat now has a serious rival that’s also cheaper

$74.95 From Smile Software, smilesoftware.com

Needs OS X 10.7 or later

PDFPEN

Useful Split View

Scan from iOS

iOS scan problems

A little confusing

GREAT

in the thumbnail or table of contents to

navigate in the main panel, and option-click

to do the same in the second panel.

The new Font Bar makes it easy to see and

edit the fonts in a document, and you can

now edit form element properties for

multiple Ľelds at the same time. Page

numbering has been improved with new

customization options, you can now add

multiple items to your library at once, and

the sidebar has been given a freshen up.

PDFpen now supports iOS 12’s Continuity

Camera, which enables you to use your

iPhone, iPod touch or iPad camera (running

iOS 12 or later) as a document scanner.

Unfortunately, Continuity Camera is ľaky

and simply wouldn’t work for us.

It also now has dictionaries for general

English, legal and medical applications, and

recognition is fast and accurate.

There’s a lot here to like, but we have a few

niggles: the interface is a little drab, there’s

a bit of a learning curve, and you’ll need to

customize the toolbars to get rid of the

wasted free space. But we have moans about

Acrobat too. PDFpen is a worthy and more

aļordable alternative.

THE BOTTOM LINE. A powerful, aļordable

alternative to Acrobat Pro for PDF editing

and document scanning. CARRIE MARSHALL

PDFPen enables you to

edit text, and resize and

reposition images in PDFs.

The new Font Bar makes it easy to see and edit font

properties in a document.

Reviews

50 AUG 2019 maclife.com

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