There are plenty of ways to view and edit PDFs on a Mac, but Apple's built-in Preview application is phenomenal and often overlooked. While Lion didn't wow the crowd with most of its features, it brought some amazing additions to Apple's PDF viewer/editor that puts it over the top and makes it our choice for the best.
10 Best Free PDF Editor for Windows 1. PDFelement PDFelement is an outstanding Windows 10 PDF editor which tops the list. It is a worthy alternative to Adobe Acrobat, which has been widely regarded as the industry standard when it comes to PDF editing. Best PDF Editors for Mac #1. PDFelement 6 is all about giving businesses the efficiency they crave when it comes to the world of PDF documents. Talk of creating, converting, editing, annotating and sharing PDF documents with the utmost professionalism.
Note: There are a few ways you could define a PDF viewer/editor, as features can range from simple form-filling to complete PDF manipulation. For this post we're concentrating on the features the average person would use, meaning viewing, form completion, annotation, and so on.
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UPDATE: Wondershare is claiming we named their Product, PDF Editor, our top choice. We did not, and they are using a false award that claims our approval. Please do not buy their products as they are a dishonest company. We've left the original text (stricken out) about PDF Editor in the alternatives section so you can see how little of a recommendation we made.
Preview
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free
Download Page
Features
- View and edit images in addition to PDF files
- Annotate, highlight, and mark up PDFs in several ways
- Digitally fill out forms
- Sign PDF documents with your webcam (read on for more info)
- Super-fast performance
- Super-fast search
- Insert new pages into PDFs
- View and edit PDF metadata
- Add and edit hyperlinks in a PDF file
Where It Excels
Preview is fast. Mac OS X isn't exactly known for its speed and efficiency, so Preview's ability to blow through PDF documents is pretty impressive. But among its many handy highlighting and annotating features, which are all solid, its ability to fill out forms is especially impressive. This may seem like a mundane thing, but when you get to the signature line it is hard to eschew at least a little reverence. Preview (in Lion) has a feature where you can sign a piece of paper, hold it up to your computer's webcam, and it'll turn it into a high-quality signature you can place in a form. It can also save multiple signatures so you don't have to continuously repeat this process. Preview is solid all-around, but it's those sorts of features that make it amazing.
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Where It Falls Short
As incredible as Preview's webcam signature feature is, it seems kind of strange that there is no ability to sign with your trackpad as well. After all, Apple Stores let you sign for purchases with your finger on an iPod touch. Additionally, Preview wasn't exactly perfect prior to Lion and Lion isn't exactly perfect on its own. It's hard to justify upgrading to OS X 10.7 if Preview is the only draw. If you're sticking with Snow Leopard, your version of Preview isn't bad but it's certainly not the best PDF editor/viewer you can find. Apple fixed a lot of quirks in Lion, which make it a pleasure to use, but if you're not running Lion you're pretty much out of luck.
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The Competition
PDFPen costs $60 but is pretty great. If you need more features than Preview can provide, it'll get the job done. PDFPen makes page rearrangement, editing, multi-document assembly, and more very easy. While it's on the expensive side, consider it a cheaper alternative to Adobe Acrobat ($200). We've never loved Acrobat and it likely provides more features than you're going to need.
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Wondershare PDF Editor ($50) is another pricey option, but it has the ability to convert PDFs to Microsoft Word documents. We're not sure how well this works, but you might want to give it a try if that's something you need. Wondershare placed a false claim on their PDF Editor software that we considered it the best. They even created a fake Lifehacker approval image to act as if we provided them with an official award. We listed it as an alternative here, but as Wondershare has opted to falsely market their product with a seal of approval from us that we never provided, we ask that you do not buy from them.
Skim is a great choice if your primary focus is annotation as that's what it was design to do. It has an impressively long list of features to make annotation easy.
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Got any other favorite PDF editor/viewer apps for Mac that you love? Share 'em in the comments.
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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Design your docs professionally using the best PDF editors for Mac, iPad, and iPad! Mark up your text, add comments, sign documents and don’t forget to safeguard them using a password to prevent unauthorized access. Head over to explore the finest PDF editors and let us know which one is primed for your specific taste:
PDF editing is a very needed feature but not every app out there provides that functionality. Not only that, the ones that enable PDF editing are very costly. For instance, take the case of PDFPen – that costs you $74.95 for the full version. Adobe’s propriety can cause a huge dent in your pocket: about $200 for the editors.
Although PDF editors are costly, not everyone wants to edit PDF documents per se. More or less, it’s only to annotate, highlight or certain other research-oriented purposes. Much of this can be achieved through a variety of software that’s less costly or free such as PDFelement for iOS. It’s completely free to use. We’ll take a look at the options available for Mac users.
Best PDF Editors for Mac
#1. PDFelement
PDFelement 6 is all about giving businesses the efficiency they crave when it comes to the world of PDF documents. Talk of creating, converting, editing, annotating and sharing PDF documents with the utmost professionalism. This software features all the tools you can use completely edit your PDF documents, from the simple tasks like editing text and images to even cooler stuff like signing your documents digitally. You can also convert to PDF or from PDF using virtually any document file type be it to Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Moreover, you can transform the scanned document to editable PDF using a top draw Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature.
Form handling has also been made super simple with this tool keeping in mind that you can create, edit, fill, sign and protect your PDF forms without breaking a sweat. You can even extract data from your PDF interactive PDF forms and export in CSV formats. It gets even better! You can speed up the process of converting, data extraction, Bates numbering and watermarking by batch processing your PDF files. Read full review.
- Download PDFelement 6 for iOS (Free)
- Download PDFelement 6 for Mac ($59.99)
- Download PDFelement 6 Pro for Mac ($99.99)
#2. Preview
Mac’s built-in solution, Preview, has become quite powerful over the years. One of the most impressive additions is the ability to annotate, highlight, adding images in a PDF file. Preview is as good as any other PDF editor out there, but it is not a full-fledged editor: you can’t edit the entire PDF file as such. You can only take to a certain level of editing where you either add or highlight sections of the PDF file. Preview can also help you combine files.
#3. Skim
Skim is a popular, open-source and free PDF reader that doubles up as a research tool with it set of features. It’s pretty much the same as Preview on Mac, but it works well for those quick annotations, comments, and highlights.
You can also customize Skim to suit your needs better. The app makes navigation super easy with the table of contents or thumbnails and visual history. That’s not all, it is integrated with BibDesk and several other third-party apps and has the support for extensive AppleScript as well.
Price: Free
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#4. JotForm PDF Editor (Online)
If you don’t like to download apps on your Mac, this online PDF Editor from JotForm is perfect. Whether it about creating a form for registration or issuing invoices to your clients; JotForm PDF Editor has got your back. You can create a regular form and share it with the recipient. The responses are saved automatically in presentable and customizable PDF files.
It also offers 100+ PDF templates across multiple categories to get you started quickly. Some of the template’s categories are invoice, registration, job application, lease agreement, event planning, and many more. If you are comfortable using the online editor, this one is the best. And yes, it is free.
Price: Free
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#5. PDF Reader – Document Expert
Take control of your PDFs with more flexibility and manage them just the way you want! PDF Reader is pretty simple yet effective enough to let you carry out your tasks with the needed efficiency.
You can create quick shortcuts to import your files and folders easily. Using TAG, you will be able to organize your PDFs ideally. Access all the needed information like bookmark, outline, thumbnails, and annotation without breaking any sweat. Keep an eye on your entire library and also check out the last import history. And yes, you can also sync your data with iCloud to access them from across your devices.
Price: Free
Download
Best PDF Editors for iPhone/iPad
Now that we’ve talked about PDF editors for the Mac, it’s also a good thing to take a look at some popular options available to do the same on iOS devices. There aren’t many popular apps or services for this, but if you’re ready to shell out some money, there are apps to help you annotate and read PDF docs on iOS devices.
#1. Good Reader
Right on top of the list is Good Reader. Sells at $4.99 and brings pretty good PDF reading and editing capability. The app has got a separate version for the iPad.
Price: $4.99
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#2. PDF Expert
Good Reader is good enough, but you can’t fill/edit forms within the PDF file using Good Reader. PDF Expert is costlier than Good Reader, but there are good features like scanning capabilities that make PDF Expert a little more advanced than Good Reader.
Price: $9.99
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#3. Foxit PDF Reader & Converter
I rate Foxit very highly as it makes PDF editing plain sailing. You can view, annotate and also secure your PDF files. The app also lets you sign documents using digital certificates. It comes with the ConnectPDF feature that allows you to collaborate with your friends.
Shield your PDF files with password and Microsoft Rights Management Services. Another notable feature of Foxit is the support for 12 languages like English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, etc.
Price: Free
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#4. MaxiPDF
For editing and designing PDF files, you can’t go wrong with a neat PDF editor like MaxiPDF. You can easily create, modify, delete text and images. It allows you to add and save comments as well.
You can upgrade to the premium ($0.99/monthly) version of the app to use it without ads. Besides, MaxiPDF supports several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Turkish.
Price: Free
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#5. Adobe Acrobat Reader
If you want to have an all-in-one PDF editing experience, pick out Adobe Acrobat Reader. There is so much to like about this app, and the first among many is the—wide range of superior editing tools. That means you have the required freedom to create eye-catching files.
Take the full advantage of sticky notes and drawing tools to make comments on PDFs. Get the most out of annotating tools to highlight and mark up the text. With the full support for Apple Pencil, it ensures you have greater precision while creating praiseworthy docs.
Price: Free
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That’s all, folks!
What’s your pick?
I think you have found an able PDF editor for your device. Which one is it? Feel free to let us know you pick in the comments.
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