Reader to Acrobat: The missing link...

By Rowan Hanna
PDF Store Support Team
Issue 12 for 2005

It's long been the case that Adobe Reader and its predecessors have been the free viewers used by the millions of PDF consumers who either don't need or can't afford the more powerful PDF functionality offered by Acrobats Standard (RRP circa US$299) and Professional (RRP circa US$449). The functionality gap can be addressed in several ways, the most obvious of which being the use of a third-party creation tool.

While there are tools that allow for additional editing options there has never been anything that really offers Acrobat-like functinality at a more palatable price-tag. Until now, that is. Nitro PDF Desktop offers advanced features including drag-and- drop PDF creation, stamping, commenting, security, digital signatures and forms, and has been described by Adobe Acrobat 7 PDF Bible author Ted Padova as, "an extraordinary PDF creation and editing tool" and "a powerhouse companion for Microsoft Office users who want to easily create, manipulate and share PDF documents."

In my testing, PDF creation was faster than Acrobat Professional 7, and more reliably retained formatting in converted web pages. In addition, Nitro PDF Desktop's support for the copying and pasting of text and graphics to and from PDF files was superior to that of Acrobat. As you may expect from such a tool, space is too limited to outline all of its features, but a fully-functional trial can be downloaded from PDF Store.

With a US$99 sticker price and an aggressive volume pricing schedule, Nitro PDF Desktop offers an inexpensive way to bring Acrobat's PDF creation and manipulation features to everybody.

Click to enlarge.