Don't know the difference between Acrobat, PDF and Reader, let alone third-party PDF creation tools? Here's the help you need.The PDF creation marketplace can intimidate the average office worker who isn't a software geek but who is suddenly responsible for creating and maintaining PDF documents.
But before you start comparing and contrasting software willy-nilly, start by narrowing your choices by determining what features will be needed and by how many people.
Think about all the ways your PDFs will be used, such as for forms or printed brochures, or as downloads from your Web site. Then look at the budget you've been assigned, and consider the PDF creation market as a car lot.
Acrobat = Cadillac
When budget isn't a consideration—or when it is, but only a few people will be doing the actual PDF creation—Adobe Acrobat offers the most features and gives the people making PDFs the widest range of custom settings. It also costs the most, but most Acrobat users probably will tell you they can't imagine using anything else.
Acrobat comes in four flavors, including Acrobat Elements, with very basic features for the general office user, available in quantities starting at 100 seats; Acrobat Standard, which adds many features for the office user, including forms support, and review and commenting; and Acrobat Professional, which adds diagnostics for print PDFs, the Adobe Designer form creation application, and features for engineers working with CAD (computer-aided design) programs and other design tools.
The fourth type of Acrobat is a newcomer on the PDF block, Acrobat 3D, which enables users to incorporate complex 3-D data into PDFs, making it viewable in Adobe Reader. While this feature might cater to a small proportion of the PDF-making public, Acrobat 3D users are stoked to be able to share their 3-D models and drawings with customers without the need to share cumbersome application files that sometimes shed too much light on proprietary design specs and techniques.
Acrobat, in any flavor, offers many other advantages to people creating PDFs: Not only does it exploit more bells and whistles of the PDF file spec than any other application, but it also supports an ecosystem of third-party plug-ins that offer even more features. One of the most popular plug-ins is Enfocus PitStop, which 70,000 creative professionals use to "preflight" (test) and repair or edit files destined for printing presses.
Jaws, Nitro, and Scansoft = Ford
After Acrobat come three robust Acrobat alternatives, which ably handle many of the tasks in Acrobat Standard.
Global Graphics' Jaws PDF Creator came out in the 1990s, based on technology used in the Harlequin RIP, software that prepress veterans recognize as an all-time classic for reliability and fidelity. Probably the first commercial Acrobat alternative to earn widespread renown, Jaws is known as stable software for office users that costs less and offers some prepress tools as well as "create from Microsoft Office" functions.
ScanSoft's (now Nuance) PDF Converter, which also offers tool bar interactivity with Microsoft Word, comes in two flavors, Standard and Professional. Both come with Create, a stand-alone utility that makes PDFs from multiple files, adds passwords and performs a number of other business-friendly functions. The Professional version adds PDF editing features as well as commenting and markup, conversion to Excel and WordPerfect, forms support, and more Office interactivity.
ARTS Nitro PDF Professional, also made for the office market, offers document security features similar to those of its competitors, as well as commenting and markup. It also has its own way of creating fillable forms, and it offers JavaScript support—an interesting way to add simple interactivity features to a PDF document.
Jaws, Nitro and Converter all offer different feature mixes, so be sure the one you buy will do the things you need it to.
Next Page: The best of the rest.
The Best of the Rest
The abovementioned applications aren't the only options for PDF creation, they're just the most widely used. Other options include:
Waiting for Microsoft. The next version of Microsoft Office, currently in the works, will support PDF creation. While many questions exist about the robustness of the features—such as how it will handle Web-quality PDF output vs. print-quality PDF output—some answers will come later this year when Microsoft unveils the first beta.
Apple Mac OS. Apple built PDF right into the operating system, and for some people, it's customizable enough to do a lot of different tasks formerly done in Acrobat. Try it out; maybe it's for you.
Freeware and shareware. Free and cheap PDF creators—most of them system-level drivers that show up as "print to PDF" buttons/menus/dialog boxes when you choose the Print command in any application—get the job done, but offer little customization (i.e. no features for resolution control for Web or print, password protection, etc.).
Some of these applications make users view ads to "pay for" the service. While these little guys might work at first, chances are you'll quickly grow out of them.
Online services. For mobile PDF creators who don't mind sharing their information with a third party, or for low-volume enterprise use, sometimes there's no need to install software. Online services from companies such as Adobe, PDF Converter and BCL Technologies offer on-the-go PDF creation.
Buyer beware
There are probably 100 commercial, freeware and shareware products to choose from beyond the ones named here, but let the buyer beware: "You get what you pay for" remains the rule of the day, as with most software purchases. The less a PDF maker costs, the less in the way of support, documentation and response to feature requests it is likely to come with.
If your company is fiercely focused on the bottom line, spending more up front for a more robust PDF creation tool might be the fiscally responsible choice. Consider what it would do to your finances if your freeware utility made PDFs that looked funny when your customers opened them in Adobe Reader and you had to invest time and money to re-create them in other software.
Thankfully, the companies that sell these applications—including Adobe—typically offer 30-day free trial downloads, so it's possible to test-drive each one within a workflow. Once you do that, it will likely become obvious which PDF maker fits your price and performance needs.
