Adobe acrobat is THE PDF editor. PDF is a proprietary format created and developed by Adobe. Any software that can edit PDFs is doing so in a format they do not have any control over. And there just aren’t any proper PDF editors that are feature complete. now if you’re an individual who needs to make a PDF in the privacy of your own home, by all means, use a cheap or free or FOSS application to do so. But if you need that PDF to be readable and useable and seamlessly compatible on other computers for other users for ever? Better pay the Adobe tax because there is a good chance, it won’t look the way you expect it to when someone opens it up in Adobe which their company definitely has.
Comment on List of Alternatives to Adobe Programs
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What the actual fuck is adobe acrobat? A pdf viewer with subscription model payment? Firefox, the browser, can edit pdf files. It’s 2025.
Jyek@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn’t with layout and reproducibility - a good PDF maker and a good reader will give you an accurate representation of how it looks on all devices.
There isn’t a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job. But they’re not dedicated PDF makers and the real problem is building fillable forms and signatures.
But there is a proprietary alternative called Master PDF that is a dedicated and supports all the PDF standard features I believe; one perpetual license is $80 compared to Adobe subscription based charging. I’m not aware of other options myself but they may exist.
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are a few other PDF editors that are cheaper, but they don’t have the same features. PDF seems like something that has outlived its purpose. There has to be other document formats that provide a similar or better experience and prevents alteration.
whereisk@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
PowerPDF or Kofax or whatever it’s called now was very close to parity if not exceed functionality for most office jobs.
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, this is my company’s preferred solution.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Any document format could prevent alteration with the addition of a digital signature.
huppakee@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
should be? yes. could be? if one of the big corpo’s with money decides to spend it, yes. But don’t assume ‘there has to be one’, it’s not like file formats suddenly appear like a rare insect or something.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
not true. dont oay adobe so more pdfs will look like the user intended. dont fall adobe scams like weird functions that should be in a pdf anyways. pdfs created with masterpdfeditor look exactly as intended. so, again: no, adobe is a scam. always has been.
Jyek@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Funny, it’s been less than 24hrs and I got a ticket in complaining about why PDFs look one way in Ease US PDF editor and totally different in Adobe Reader. You’re just wrong. I didn’t say it was worth the money to pay for Adobe, and I didn’t say it wasn’t a scam. But I do tell the truth when it comes to true parity, there are competitors to PDF editing but there is no free PDF editors that properly do the job 100% of the time.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
i do not know what “ease US PDF editor” is and dont care. there are plenty of broken editors. i am saying you are wrong to think only adobe scamware can create pdfs that look as intended in the reader.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Building off of this, the PDF standard supports all sorts of craziness. It can have embedded math and logic similar to excel files, to the point there’s templates available for banks which will automatically calculate entire loans (including weird ones like balloon mortgages and variable interest rate stuff) without leaving Adobe Reader, and the recent Doom PDF and Linux PDF projects exploit the fact that pdfs support embedded javascript.
There’s also an actual market for enterprise PDF templates like the banking ones I described with automatic calculations and whatnot. So some people literally make their living selling PDFs to businesses that businesses actually use
Bouzou@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t know how it stacks up price-wise, but I’d argue Bluebeam is a far superior PDF editing program. It even covers some word processing, Illustrator, and some PowerPoint adjacent things.
That being said, I can’t see it as practical for the average consumer.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
it won’t look the way you expect it to when someone opens it up in Adobe which their company definitely has.
That sounds like a problem between them and Adobe tbh
Smoogs@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How does Sumatra fall into all of this? It’s an open source version
kandoh@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
In Acrobat I can go into print preview and see what my file will print like using only black and a spot color ink, I can auto-convert RGB images to CMYK, and it has a pretty robust set of accessibility features so the visually impaired can read it.
It’s for professionals.
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Firefox can do basic annotating, adding text and adding pictures but it can’t make a new PDF from scratch.
You may be confusing Adobe Acrobat Reader with Adobe Acrobat? Full Acrobat is the proprietary tool to make a PDF file from scratch including some of the more complex functions.
PDF is an open standard and has been for a while, so there are now plenty of alternatives for most of the functions. LibreOffice Draw and Inkscape can do a lot of PDF creation functions but not all. Lots of “print to PDF” options to create basic PDF documents too.
However some of the more niche functions are not widely supported or well supported; and there isn’t really any opensource dedicated PDF maker that I’m aware of. Layout tools are abundant but I think it’s things like building forms and document signing that is less easily replicated. There is Master PDF - a fully functional PDF maker which is proprietary and available for Linux; it $80 for a perpetual license. I’m not aware of any other alternatives myself.
Thrashy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In AEC work we’ve moved almost exclusively to a competing PDF tool called Blubeam, which is proprietary but very worth the price, with tools for scaling, dimensioning, and producing material takeoffs from PDF drawings. Much of what you’d use Acrobat for in a more typical office environment are absent or limited, though.