Acrobat Pro XI alternative?

[Uplift]

My Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is up for renewal in March, I have found myself using alternatives so I am planning to cancel it, one app I do use is Acrobat Pro X.. Are there any decent mac apps that offer similar functionality?

More specifically I use it to:

- Optimise PDFs
- Merge multiple documents into a PDF (pdfs, images, word, excel)
- Edit PDFs (mainly change or remove text)

Does such an app exist for Mac?

 

[dyn]

The only one I can think of is PDFPen/PDFPenPro.

 

[campyguy]

Seconded on PDFPen Pro. Even the non-Pro version is pretty powerful. Smile is a VERY responsive developer. I've been on board since version 3.

I have had only one issue with their product - sometimes their markups or changes aren't reflected in other PDF applications, however, I'm not running the current version. My only explanation regarding markup issues is that maybe Smile was writing to its own "layer", and readable only in PDFPen or in flattened PDF files. I've learned to flatten PDFs before sending them to clients, and they've never noticed the difference - IOW, "a PDF file is a PDF file".

 

[MisterMe]

My Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is up for renewal in March, I have found myself using alternatives so I am planning to cancel it, one app I do use is Acrobat Pro X.. Are there any decent mac apps that offer similar functionality?

More specifically I use it to:

- Optimise PDFs
- Merge multiple documents into a PDF (pdfs, images, word, excel)
- Edit PDFs (mainly change or remove text)

Does such an app exist for Mac?

A more established alternative is Ovis pdf-Office Professional. It is not clear why you want to switch from Adobe Acrobat Pro. I purchased my license rather than use a rented license. I am happy with my choice.

Another thing that you must consider is reliability. It is commonly believed that PDF is a universal standard. My experience is that various developers adhere to the PDF standard only in the breach. If you want want to produce PDF files that are virtually guaranteed to work everywhere, then Adobe Acrobat XI Pro is the way to go. Even at that, print to PostScript and then distill your PostScript files PDF using Adobe Distiller, one of the utilities in the Acrobat XI Pro suite.

 

[dyn]

If you want pdf files to work elsewhere you need to pick the correct pdf format. The worst thing you could do is use Adobe Acrobat, especially when left with the default settings as this means it will use the Adobes own pdf version which has major compatibility issues with any software that isn't from Adobe. Stick to the open ISO formats (pdf/a, pdf/x, etc.) and you'll be fine (and yes, you can make Adobe Acrobat use those too).

Mind you that many governments require the use of open formats and thus require you to use the ISO pdf formats instead of the ones from Adobe.