Author Topic: Any free portable pdf editor with these features? (Read 13227 times)

motiontwelve · « **on:** August 31, 2015, 06:24 PM »

I am mainly looking for the following functions:
- Add pages
- Delete pages
- Rotate pages
- Crop Pages
- Add Text
- Eraser
- Add Comments
- Add Stamps
- Encryption
- Insert Images
- OCR (I know this one is really pushing it)

I was also thinking of going around PDF's limitations and first convert it to TIFF and use a multi-page TIFF editor but couldn't find anything suitable for this task as well.

TIA

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #1 on:** August 31, 2015, 08:17 PM »

Hallo.

You had a similar thread here from March:
https://www.donation....msg377570#msg377570
(Though as I look at that now, that one was about images).

So to rephrase the question, you're looking for "a free alternative to Acrobat"?

motiontwelve · « **Reply #2 on:** September 01, 2015, 10:14 AM »

Hallo.

You had a similar thread here from March:
https://www.donation....msg377570#msg377570
(Though as I look at that now, that one was about images).

So to rephrase the question, you're looking for "a free alternative to Acrobat"?
-TaoPhoenix (August 31, 2015, 08:17 PM)

That's correct. Any ideas?

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #3 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:13 AM »

Hallo.

You had a similar thread here from March:
https://www.donation....msg377570#msg377570
(Though as I look at that now, that one was about images).

So to rephrase the question, you're looking for "a free alternative to Acrobat"?
-TaoPhoenix (August 31, 2015, 08:17 PM)

That's correct. Any ideas?
-motiontwelve (September 01, 2015, 10:14 AM)

Sorry, no, but it's also a bit odd in that for example a few companies do Browsers, but few/ no-one is doing free super-featured PDF editors. It's probably tough work, but I'm also betting Adobe has locked up certain features into patents that other people can't do without big agreements. Sorta like a "protect our monopoly" type move.

wraith808 · « **Reply #4 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:26 AM »

PDF XChange Editor is an alternative, as long as you're not using it for work. Not sure if it has all of your required features, but it's a start.

anandcoral · « **Reply #5 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:34 AM »

Not one but you can achive these by using two or three free alternatives.
PDF XChange for editing, stamping, text etc.
PDF Rider for add, delete pages etc.

Regards,

Anand

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #6 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:45 AM »

Not one but you can achive these by using two or three free alternatives.
PDF XChange for editing, stamping, text etc.
PDF Rider for add, delete pages etc.

Regards,

Anand

-anandcoral (September 01, 2015, 11:34 AM)

This is the first I've heard of PDF Rider, so that's interesting. I haven't done much with PDFs in a while, but that was usually what I was doing most of. So I'll have to check that one out. Merging and Splitting pages is my other killer app use, so Anand do you know if PDF rider does that? (Plus it will just be interesting to see how it behaves with Dexpot.)

anandcoral · « **Reply #7 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:51 AM »

From the website http://pdfrider.codeplex.com/

PDF Rider is made upon the utility pdftk and can be used to:

* Merge PDF documents
* Insert pages from another pdf file
* Extract pages from a PDF document to a new document
* Delete pages
* Rotate pages
* Crypt and Decrypt a pdf file
* Burst a document into single pages

You have to check if it works as per your requirement.

Regards,

Anand

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #8 on:** September 01, 2015, 11:56 AM »

From the website http://pdfrider.codeplex.com/

PDF Rider is made upon the utility pdftk and can be used to:

* Merge PDF documents
* Insert pages from another pdf file
* Extract pages from a PDF document to a new document
* Delete pages
* Rotate pages
* Crypt and Decrypt a pdf file
* Burst a document into single pages

You have to check if it works as per your requirement.

Regards,

Anand

-anandcoral (September 01, 2015, 11:51 AM)

Heh I'm up against a self imposed time clock today, but that sounds really close to what I need, so I gotta test it and report back! In many ways those are "basic" features but it always bothered me that readers felt "crippled" !

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #9 on:** September 02, 2015, 06:30 AM »

Turns out Anand, that PDF Rider really is too cut down to be useful.

From another thread, I went for PDF Exchange Editor Free and I believe it just takes all the cakes home.
I just did a multi page cut from a document, something like pages 1-3,18-20 + save as one document!

Now I'm investigating if their demo Pro advanced features are worth about $43 to upgrade.

But even in Free, they're the ones to beat and darn close to what the other guy was looking for. I consider the best of Freemium to be when the free version is *really solid*, and lets you just get work done, and then Pro has some one or more absolutely stunning features. PDF Exchange looks really close to that model because as I remarked in a couple of threads, notice for ex PDF Rider has no viewer, so you can't see what you're chopping, and it can't do anything near as fancy as the multi page edit I just did.

And if there IS a killer app feature, $43 is way better than Adobe's multi hundred price tag!!

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #10 on:** September 02, 2015, 06:34 AM »

I am mainly looking for the following functions:
- Add pages
- Delete pages
- Rotate pages
- Crop Pages
- Add Text
- Eraser
- Add Comments
- Add Stamps
- Encryption
- Insert Images
- OCR (I know this one is really pushing it)

I was also thinking of going around PDF's limitations and first convert it to TIFF and use a multi-page TIFF editor but couldn't find anything suitable for this task as well.

TIA

-motiontwelve (August 31, 2015, 06:24 PM)

Motion12, I'm gonna say give PDF Exchange Editor Free a hard look. Just to keep your original question alive, I'm speed-posting this. A couple of your features may not be there, , but it's gonna be close.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #11 on:** September 02, 2015, 07:34 AM »

Okay, here we go:

- Add pages -- yes
- Delete pages -- Pro, but I think you can get clever and do "extract" the inverse pages and re-save.
- Rotate pages -- Yes
- Crop Pages -- Pro
- Add Text --Yes (But you said TEXT, so that seems free, but adding shapes and lines etc is Pro)
- Eraser -- Sorta; You erase text with the "Add Text" tool but hit backspace. But I think erasing shapes etc is Pro.
- Add Comments -- I don't see this even for Pro though I think I might ask the developers about it. Looks like you can see/etc other people's existing comments though. And it adds Stickies so I'm not sure the diff between stickies and Comments

- Add Stamps -- Look at Digital Signing - Timestamps? Sign Document? Certify? But all that is Pro
- Encryption -- This might be the same as File/Doc Properties/Password Security and stuff
- Insert Images -- Pro
- OCR -- Actually seems to be there! But my particular machine crashes the prog with an error but I have a quirky ailing copy of XP, so you should try it.

And the complete chart comparison is here:
http://tracker-softw...cts-comparison-chart

So, does that help?

Curt · « **Reply #12 on:** September 02, 2015, 08:56 AM »

I think his keyword is "free"

tomos · « **Reply #13 on:** September 02, 2015, 10:11 AM »

I think his keyword is "free"
-Curt (September 02, 2015, 08:56 AM)

I'd say Tao's summary is as near as he'll get - I'm actually surprised the free version even does that much!

Re PDF Exchange & OCR, see quote below - relates to the viewer, but presume the editor is at least as good.

PDF-XChange Viewer now gets a 5 x from me (was 4½).
No issues re OCR, now - it all seems to work just fine. I see that it currently caters for English, French, German, Spanish, but I have only used the English OCR functionality so far.
-IainB (June 20, 2013, 12:56 AM)

I agree that PDF-XChange Viewer is excellent. I used the free version for years, and recently have upgraded to PRO.

Regarding OCR, it is generally fine for most purposes. Where it begins to have problems is with poorly scanned texts. For those situations I use ABBYY FineReader, and there can be a big difference: where PDF-XChange Viewer might have a 60-70% success rate in recognising text (which is basically unusable, as you can't understand a sentence where a third of the words are unintelligible), FineReader produces a 99.99% correct OCR. But these are marginal cases I'm talking about (book pages scanned at a low resolution).
-dr_andus (July 22, 2013, 07:09 AM)

Curt · « **Reply #14 on:** September 02, 2015, 04:56 PM »

One minor thing: "Extract page" will not lead to "Delete page".

I am mainly looking for the following functions:
- Add pages - Delete pages - Rotate pages - Crop Pages - Add Text - Eraser - Add Comments - Add Stamps - Encryption - Insert Images - OCR
-motiontwelve (August 31, 2015, 06:24 PM)

motiontwelve simply listed all the features of PDF-Exchange Viewer PRO and said "I want all this for free"

It will be interesting to see if he can get all that for free.

wraith808 · « **Reply #15 on:** September 02, 2015, 05:58 PM »

One minor thing: "Extract page" will not lead to "Delete page".
-Curt (September 02, 2015, 04:56 PM)

It will if you do it in the way that was described.

I want to delete page 2 of a 10 page document. So I select page 1, and pages 3-10, and extract them. I end up with a document that does not have page 2.

yogi22 · « **Reply #16 on:** September 16, 2015, 07:36 AM »

Adobe Acrobat 8 PRO is neither portable nor supported, however by visiting the following site, with a bit of work you can install a fully functional version of this formerly pricey program. It has worked very well for me.
kk
http://blog.stead.id...crobat-pro-8-on.html

moongose · « **Reply #17 on:** September 16, 2015, 09:41 AM »

Check the PdfToolkit

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #18 on:** September 16, 2015, 01:20 PM »

Adobe Acrobat 8 PRO is neither portable nor supported, however by visiting the following site, with a bit of work you can install a fully functional version of this formerly pricey program. It has worked very well for me.
kk
http://blog.stead.id...crobat-pro-8-on.html
-yogi22 (September 16, 2015, 07:36 AM)

Interesting, though that looks too complex for me! ( "...then do the following steps ... download these updates and install them in the correct order ..." )

I have less complex needs than all that, and if I ever really need to do power house work, I might be able to justify affording a full Acrobat 11 or something.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #19 on:** September 16, 2015, 01:26 PM »

Check the PdfToolkit
-moongose (September 16, 2015, 09:41 AM)

From their page:

"Requirement 1:
Free Adobe Reader

Requirement 2:
Free GhostScript 8.63 (10MB)"

So I guess there's an efficiency effect going on here - that people want to preserve parts of the "freemium" effect and not just release a full featured competitor to Adobe.

tomos · « **Reply #20 on:** September 16, 2015, 01:31 PM »

Adobe Acrobat 8 PRO is neither portable nor supported, however by visiting the following site, with a bit of work you can install a fully functional version of this formerly pricey program. It has worked very well for me.
kk
http://blog.stead.id...crobat-pro-8-on.html
-yogi22 (September 16, 2015, 07:36 AM)

Interesting, though that looks too complex for me! ( "...then do the following steps ... download these updates and install them in the correct order ..." )
-TaoPhoenix (September 16, 2015, 01:20 PM)

and those updates are no longer available from Adobe...

moongose · « **Reply #21 on:** September 17, 2015, 05:22 AM »

Check the PdfToolkit
-moongose (September 16, 2015, 09:41 AM)

From their page:

"Requirement 1:
Free Adobe Reader

Requirement 2:
Free GhostScript 8.63 (10MB)"

So I guess there's an efficiency effect going on here - that people want to preserve parts of the "freemium" effect and not just release a full featured competitor to Adobe.
-TaoPhoenix (September 16, 2015, 01:26 PM)

I don't have either of those installed on my system and the toolkit works. At least extracting, deleting, rearranging and rotating pages, merging pdf. I haven't need other functions, but it seems that they work too.