Looking for a free-ware application on mac that will allow editing PDF files and adding your own text - including printing.. Not necessarily saving said text but just printing the pdf document with the text.
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Any PDF editor apps?
- Thread starter badtwistoffate
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I dont know any app like that. But what do you mean by adding text? Like notes? That you can do in preview. If you wanna edit whole text than its much more complicated and you will probably need to edit in Illustrator or Photoshop. depends on your needs.
Preview in Leopard is supposed to handle limited editing of PDF's, although I haven't tried this functionality yet. But is there any full featured, ready-made Mac OS X Aqua freeware editor? No..
However, on Unix/X11, there's PDFedit
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFedit for general info/screenshots.
A package for this doesn't yet exist on Fink or MacPorts, so you'll have to download the source tarball from sourceforge and compile it yourself. It requires, among other things, the Qt3 libraries, which you can install from fink (or download from trolltech).
If you're finding yourself needing to edit PDFs regularly, you might as well spring for Adobe Acrobat Professional (get someone with an academic discount to buy it for ~$150).
However, on Unix/X11, there's PDFedit
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFedit for general info/screenshots.
A package for this doesn't yet exist on Fink or MacPorts, so you'll have to download the source tarball from sourceforge and compile it yourself. It requires, among other things, the Qt3 libraries, which you can install from fink (or download from trolltech).
If you're finding yourself needing to edit PDFs regularly, you might as well spring for Adobe Acrobat Professional (get someone with an academic discount to buy it for ~$150).
I dont think there is any app that allows you to add text wherever you want like a freeware on windows pdfxviewer (?). Skim however (which is free) allows you to add a note wherever you want and save it or print it but the text will be in a yellow box
Preview will allow you to fill in PDF's, and then you can print this to PDF, but this does not allow you to edit text that is already in the PDF. In fact PDF is not a good format to allow for editing. A lot of things that seem like they are obviously together (including paragraphs) are actually separate elements. Sometimes each letter in a particular word is a separate object. This is all done in the name of making the output always the same.
There are a few programs out there that can sometimes edit PDF's but they are subject to a lot of mistakes, and don't always work well. I have never been able to use one of these successfully.
The way that I usually do this is to use Acrobat Reader to figure out what fonts are used in a PDF, then I import the PDF into OmniGraffle as an image, set that in a background layer, then make my edits on top of that. Then everything gets exported to a new PDF.
There are a few programs out there that can sometimes edit PDF's but they are subject to a lot of mistakes, and don't always work well. I have never been able to use one of these successfully.
The way that I usually do this is to use Acrobat Reader to figure out what fonts are used in a PDF, then I import the PDF into OmniGraffle as an image, set that in a background layer, then make my edits on top of that. Then everything gets exported to a new PDF.
Skim
I would also recommend Skim for PDF highlighting, adding notes etc.
Unless I'm missing something, when I make changes to a pdf in Preview and save the file, from then on that highlight or note is permanent. In Skim I can keep changing my underlines or what not for as long as I want between saves. Which is great as I go through research papers.
I would also recommend Skim for PDF highlighting, adding notes etc.
Unless I'm missing something, when I make changes to a pdf in Preview and save the file, from then on that highlight or note is permanent. In Skim I can keep changing my underlines or what not for as long as I want between saves. Which is great as I go through research papers.