My favorite tools

Here is a list of the tools that I use and recommend!

  • PDF CanOpener (Windjack Solutions) - This is the MUST HAVE Acrobat plugin for anyone that works with PDF in a technical fashion! View, analyze and edit the actual objects that make up the PDF file. (Windows only)
  • PitStop Professional (Enfocus) - When I need to view & edit the page contents of my PDFs, this is the tool to use! Not only can you see & change the attributes of each content element - but you can even more them around on the page. Also features a better text editing tool than Acrobat’s. (Mac and Win)
  • FTMaster (Altsoft) - When you need to know everything about the fonts in your PDFs - this is the place to turn! It also features all sorts of other features for font format conversion and even font glyph editing, if you are into those things. (Windows only)

Some other tools worth mentioning

  • Redax (Appligent) - When you need to be sure that what you’ve removed from a PDF is truely gone (aka redaction) - there is NO OTHER CHOICE!  Redax is the only program available today that does 100% correct and proper redaction of PDF documents.
  • Enfocus Browser (Enfocus) - Although it doesn’t seem to be available anymore from their website, Enfocus used to make this free plugin available. If you can find it, it’s a nice free alternative to something like PDF CanOpener for low level PDF editing. (Mac and Win)
  • Font Reporter (PDFlib) - Excellent free plugin for Acrobat that creates a PDF report about all the fonts in your documents. (Mac and Win)

And what list of PDF tools would be complete with a list of some of the programs that I’ve written or been involved with:

  • PDF Enhancer - Available for both desktops and servers, Enhancer is the tool of choice for producing the “smallest, most reliable, best quality PDF”.  You’ll find professional quality tools for color conversion/management, imposition, compression & optimization and more!
  • PDF Appraiser - If you want to find out if your PDFs are ready to be used for PDF/A compliancy, this is where you want to go.  Not only can it check the PDFs, but it can also fix most of the errors commonly found!