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Catalina: Need alternative apps for Acrobat Pro and Adobe Illustrator!

shankar2

shankar2

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 7, 2009
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Hi so I upgraded to Catalina and now my Adobe cs 6 illustrator and Adobe acrobat pro apps don’t work.

Can anyone suggest me good alternatives for both apps?

In acrobat alternative the new app needs to be able to digitally sign pdf files.

In illustrator app the new app needs to open and edit existing illustrator files.

Thanks so much!
 
Affinity Designer is what I use as an alternative to Illustrator.

Acrobat Pro I have no need for, build in Mac Tools do all I need. Including adding my signature. For proper digital signing, I'd always use a service like Hello or Docusign as traceability is more important than signing itself. But your use case may vary.
 
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Preview works well for signing PDFs. I use it a lot, although I wouldn’t use any app for contracts, I'd want something with traceability as mentioned above.

I’ve got an external boot of macOS that I will keep on Mohave for when I need to update to Catalina. That way I get to keep using Illustrator CS4. I have Affinity Designer, which is a good alternative, but has a couple of flaws for my workflow. VectorStyler is in beta and looking very promising, and is free to use at the moment as it is in beta. They are open to feedback as well.
 
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What about redacted regions in pdf files? Preview app?
 
Hi so I got the annotate and rectangle but how do you get a black filled rectangle?

Edit: I got the fill part.

My next question is, if I have a digital signature file (via usb drive). Can preview manage to sign the pdf document where it's to be added?
 
Moonjumper said:
Preview works well for signing PDFs. I use it a lot, although I wouldn’t use any app for contracts, I'd want something with traceability as mentioned above.

I’ve got an external boot of macOS that I will keep on Mohave for when I need to update to Catalina. That way I get to keep using Illustrator CS4. I have Affinity Designer, which is a good alternative, but has a couple of flaws for my workflow. VectorStyler is in beta and looking very promising, and is free to use at the moment as it is in beta. They are open to feedback as well.
Click to expand...

Hi there, I'm looking for an alternative pdf app to run with Catalina that will also do OCR (character recognition) and also allow extraction and insertion of pages to a pdf document, a la Acrobat Pro. Any thoughts.
 
shankar2 said:
Hi so I got the annotate and rectangle but how do you get a black filled rectangle?

Edit: I got the fill part.

My next question is, if I have a digital signature file (via usb drive). Can preview manage to sign the pdf document where it's to be added?
Click to expand...
I use PDF Expert 7, works like a charm
 
Pohutukawa said:
Hi there, I'm looking for an alternative pdf app to run with Catalina that will also do OCR (character recognition) and also allow extraction and insertion of pages to a pdf document, a la Acrobat Pro. Any thoughts.
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure Preview will allow you to add and remove pages to a pdf (I’m on my iPad at the moment, so cannot check). But I don’t know about OCR.
 
allan.nyholm said:
I haven't been stalking or anything(I'm possibly just viewing the same threads) but it appears that you've located some alternative apps for your switch to macOS from Windows?
Click to expand...
Yes i made an awesome huge list after testing so many apps. I put only the quality apps and when I posted them, some moderator deleted the post probably thinking I’m spamming. I made a thread about this on Notebook review forum in their Apple and Mac section
 
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Ultra Male said:
Yes i made an awesome huge list after testing so many apps. I put only the quality apps and when I posted them, some moderator deleted the post probably thinking I’m spamming. I made a thread about this on Notebook review forum in their Apple and Mac section
Click to expand...

That is unfortunate. I would love to see that list, as well.
 
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Hi so for my mac catalina, the Acrobat Pro cs6 broke coz of 64bit restriction.

I am now looking for a free or cheaply priced PDF viewer that can redact text etc, and also use digital signature files to sign PDF forms. Can anyone please suggest me one app? thanks!
 
Anyone suggest a cheaper PDF viewer? Some of the good ones are now highly priced subscription model.
 
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Hi so anyone care to suggest a good cheap PDF editor for my mac? Thanks!
 
cyb3rdud3 said:
Yes, I used it for that. Make certain you make the annotate toolbar visible. I just use a black filled rectangle ;)
Click to expand...

Just a quick heads up - drawing a black rectangle makes it tricky for a human viewer to see the text underneath, but that text is still available. e.g. you could open it up in Illustrator and delete the black box, or use a command line utility such as pdftotext to extract just the text content.

Of course, its up to you as to whether that bothers you or not, and I guess depends on how sensitive the information you've supposedly redacted is!
 
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superscape said:
Just a quick heads up - drawing a black rectangle makes it tricky for a human viewer to see the text underneath, but that text is still available. e.g. you could open it up in Illustrator and delete the black box, or use a command line utility such as pdftotext to extract just the text content.

Of course, its up to you as to whether that bothers you or not, and I guess depends on how sensitive the information you've supposedly redacted is!
Click to expand...
Good point well made :)

best to flatten the document then before passing it on. In preview you can do thatby using the Print to PDF option instead of export or save.
 
cyb3rdud3 said:
Affinity Designer is what I use as an alternative to Illustrator.

Acrobat Pro I have no need for, build in Mac Tools do all I need. Including adding my signature. For proper digital signing, I'd always use a service like Hello or Docusign as traceability is more important than signing itself. But your use case may vary.
Click to expand...
Digital Signatures are snake oil. Since about 2000 in the US you can sign any document digitally by just typing in your name in a signature field. If you MUST, you can add two forward slashes to indicate that you, the signatuor, understands this is a signature block.
www.congress.gov

Text - S.761 - 106th Congress (1999-2000): Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act

Text for S.761 - 106th Congress (1999-2000): Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act
www.congress.gov

Signature//William Hagan

PS. Vote for Affinity here as well. Mac Preview handles any minor PDF editing I need.
 
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