Preview's markup tools are hidden when you first open a PDF document. But if you need a basic set of tools for highlighting or redacting text, making notes, or adding comments to a document, you won't likely need much more than what's already available on your Mac.
So you're limited to Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman, Verdana and a Signature font for signing documents.Īpple's Preview app is built-in to the macOS and offers a minimalist but valuable set of tools for marking up any PDF file. Additionally, the app has very limited font options, as it doesn't use any of your computer's fonts. Because there are no OCR capabilities, you can't make changes to existing text you're limited to adding new text to an existing document. PDFescape does have some major limitations in adding new text. Using the web app's insert tools, you can also add new images and text to a document, white-out text, and add web links and form fields. You'll find a pretty solid set of standard annotation tools that can easily add, highlight and strike through text insert notes and otherwise mark up the pages of your PDF file. But PDFescape's annotation tools are easy to use. There's also an "ultimate" plan for $72 per year.Īccessible through any modern web browser, PDFescape offers no OCR capabilities like PDF Candy does. (PDFescape used to limit you to 50 pages, so the higher limit is a welcome change.) If you need to edit larger files, you can upgrade to a premium account for $36 a year.
PDFescape is a basic, web-based PDF-editing and -annotation program you can use for free to work on PDF documents that are smaller than either 10MB or 100 pages, whichever is greater. This doesn't make this program bad at what it's supposed to do it just makes you feel like you're working outside your chosen OS.Įxtremely limited font options when you add text Editing tools surround your document, and the UI feels disorganized, offering few options for customization.īecause it's designed to work on both Macs and PCs, Acrobat Pro DC looks like it belongs in neither environment. It feels like a half-realized demo of what the app could be. What I don't like about Acrobat Pro DC is the interface. I was able to make changes to everything with zero issues. It's also easy to edit images and text in documents you haven't scanned. Changing text in an OCR'd document was simple and the results looked great. Instead, the app waits for you to begin using the Pro DC's edit tools, recognizing and converting the pages as you select them for editing. Acrobat DC's OCR engine can convert scanned documents to text, which you can then search through and change.īut Acrobat doesn't offer to convert an entire document the moment you open it. Acrobat Pro DC offers a complete set of PDF-editing tools, and it even lets you edit scanned documents.