Free PDF Readers / Editors
There was a day when you were limited to only Adobe® Acrobat® Reader for viewing PDF files. Those days are gone and a whole world of possibilities have been opened up by entry of various other companies into that space. The available functionality varies from reader to reader but most are more full featured than Acrobat® Reader. Click on the software name in the heading to go to their website.
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The granddaddy of all PDF readers, Adobe PDF reader offers little functionality at the cost of system performance. Their desire is that you will see the need to purchase the full version of the program. See their site for all the available features of Acrobat ® Reader®.
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Foxit Reader is fast and light on system resources. It comes with the ability to fill out PDF forms, annotate PDF's, and share your PDF's on popular social networks. In addition Foxit Reader will save PDFs as a text file, spell check your annotations and even read your PDF out loud, As is the case with most readers Foxit offers a version with more function for sale. We recently needed the ability for our front office to be able to scan to a PDF in a simple and reliable way. The answer to our problem was Foxit PhantomPDF Express. For less that $30.00 we had a lot of functionality for not a lot of money. I really like the way they have taken their product and allowed you to pick the level of functionality you need at a price that is affordable.
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Nitro Reader has functionality along with the ability to produce PDF's from the included PDF printer driver. Annotate PDF's, fill out forms, extract images and text from your PDF files and even sign them with Nitro Reader.
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Nuance Reader of course reads PDF files, but it also will save them to the Microsoft® Word and Microsoft® Excel Formats or to Rich Text Format (RTF). I recommend seeing their site for a full explanation of all the readers features.
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This reader from Tracker software offers the ability to annotate PDF files, save the PDF as a BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and also you can extract text from the PDF file. See the site for a complete list of features.
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PDFill Tools is not a PDF reader, but is a toolbox that allows you to manipulate PDF files in ways such as merging 2 PDF files into a single file, splitting and reordering pages, rotating and cropping pages and converting PDF's to images. It contains 15 useful tools for working with PDF files. For a complete listing of tools visit their site.
Free Imposition Tools
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Need to make a booklet from a PDF file? Look no further, than the free Gimposition program. Full featured? No. But it works and the price is unbeatable. Free. Take it for a spin before trying a costly alternative. One caveat, it will not correctly produce a booklet from a cropped PDF. It apparently only recognizes the original bounding box size.
