MacFormat UK – September 2019

The new Font Bar makes it particularly easy to see and

edit font properties in a document.

PDFPen enables you to edit

text, and resize and reposition

images in PDFs.

SEPTEMBER 2019 | MACFORMAT | 93

W

hile every Mac can make simple

PDFs, editing and interacting

with complex PDF documents can

be an expensive exercise. Adobe’s Acrobat

Pro DC is £15.17 a month; if you’re working in

an environment that subscribes to Adobe’s

Creative Cloud, you’ll have Acrobat already,

but if not give the PDFpen trial period a go.

At £68.95 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 £99.95 that adds

form creation, website conversion, Portfolio

document creation, and the ability to correct

typos in the OCR text layer. PDFpen Pro can

also use OCR on horizontal Chinese, Japanese,

and Korean documents.

The latest standard 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 effective

navigation: click in the thumbnail or table of

contents to navigate in the main panel, and

å-click to do the same in the second panel.

Font Bar

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

fields at the same time. Page numbering has

been improved with new customisation

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 flaky 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

customise the toolbars to get rid of the wasted

free space. But then we have moans about

Acrobat too. PDFpen is a powerful and more

affordable alternative. CARRIE MARSHALL

Works well

with Split View,

with real-time

updates and

effective

navigation

An affordable

alternative to Acrobat

Pro for PDF editing and

document scanning.

++++++

Useful Split View

Scan from iOS...

... iOS scan problems

A little confusing

VERDICT

£68.95 FROM Smile Software, smilesoftware.com NEEDS OS X 10.7 or later

PDFpen

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

Image credit: Smile Software