Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Full Review and Alternatives

Key Features in Adobe Acrobat Pro

The comprehensiveness of Adobe Acrobat is truly unrivaled both in online and offline use. With this program, you get to process all kinds of PDF files including shared ones, by taking advantage of some of the most powerful features as below. The good thing is that all the features below are presented on a unified toolbar for convenience.

Create/Convert PDFs

While an app like Acrobat Reader only lets you view PDFs, Acrobat Pro DC goes the extra mile to offer PDF creation and conversion options. You get to create PDFs from single or multiple files (Word, Excel, image, TXT, RTF, etc), a scanner, webpage (URL or file), clipboard, or from scratch (blank page). The best thing here is that you can convert to and from PDF. To be specific, here is a list of the various conversion options available;

• Word to PDF
• PPT to PDF
• Excel to PDF
• JPG to PDF
• PDF to Word
• PDF to PPT
• PDF to Excel
• PDF to JPG
• HTML to PDF

In all these tasks, Acrobat Pro guarantees format and layout formatting, ridding you of the need for tons of post-conversion editing.

Whether you are creating or just converting to or from PDF format, the process is overly quick with high-quality output. Besides, the supported batch conversion feature lets you process multiple files all at the same time, saving you a ton of time and effort.

Edit PDFs

In a quest to give you total control over your documents, Acrobat DC provides you with all the necessary editing tools at your disposal. And while other apps will offer a separate PDF editor, you need not leave the Adobe Acrobat interface to access editing options. Some of the editing options include the ability to;

• Change/add/delete text or graphics
• Fix typos
• Insert/rearrange/delete pages
• Add/delete images
• Access commenting options (sticky notes, highlights, among other annotations)
• Combine multiple PDFs into one
• Rotate pages (portrait or landscape)
• Crop pages
• Split PDFs (by file size, bookmarks, or number of pages)
• Fill and sign PDF forms
• Redact information
• Optimize/compress PDFs
• Watermark
• Header and Footer options
• Add/delete URLs

All these editing options let you tailor the output to your specific needs, therefore communicating the information as intended.

Scan and OCR

Instead of retyping content from scanned or image-based PDFs, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC presents you with a very accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool with support for a plethora of languages.

You can choose to OCR all the pages, the current page or define a page range of choice, not forgetting the downsample options. In terms of the output, you can choose between exporting the output to a searchable image, or editable text and images, depending on your preferences.

Fill and Sign PDF Documents

In most instances, when a PDF form is shared with you to fill, you may feel that the only way is to print it, fill, scan, and then re-share. Of course, this is quite tedious and time-consuming but you can avoid all this when Acrobat Pro DC comes into play.

Adobe Acrobat brings you the handy Fill and Sign tool that makes it overly easy to fill out, sign, and send PDF forms electronically no matter the device. The included Adobe Sensei AI helps you add information even faster by securely saving your personal autofill collection; through this, the AI can always detect a field and automatically input the right data.

In fact, you can also add text boxes, checkmarks, and even your e-signature or initials to personalize the document even further and help the recipient confirm that the PDF form is sent from you.

Adobe Document Cloud

The Adobe Document Cloud is an online cloud service (free 2GB storage) provided by Adobe where you can store, share, and access PDF files on the go (web, desktop, mobile). This service allows the integration and consolidation of various tools like electronic form filling and signing, document scanning, and PDF conversion.

With this feature, you will no longer be stuck on a desktop PC anytime you need to access your files but rather they will live online making them accessible from almost any platform. Overall, you will experience greater levels of reliability, accessibility, processing, and convenient sharing of documents.

Compare PDFs

During document collaboration, there can be multiple revisions of a document and some changes may go unnoticed. Luckily, Acrobat Pro DC provides you with a nifty tool that helps to compare documents and realize all the changes made.

The comparison tool has been redesigned in a way that it is easy to spot the differences, perform efficient reviewing, compare PDFs side by side, besides applying filters where necessary. The filters come in handy to highlight what has been changed (images, annotations, text, formatting). This way, no changes will ever slip without you noticing.

Protect and Unlock PDFs

When handling sensitive information, it is always advisable to go by all means possible to ensure that the information does not fall into the hands of unauthorized parties. Acrobat Pro DC is very committed in regards to this and therefore presents reliable ways to encrypt PDFs and even define permissions.

To be specific, you can add passwords or certificates to your documents to restrict opening, viewing, copying, printing, and editing. Even better, this process can be automated for your PDFs and you can also take advantage of the included custom security policies instead of having to define security options each time.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC also offers convenient ways of unlocking PDF documents that no longer need protection. Mind you, this is only possible when you have the unlocking password for that specific document. At the click of a button, you can input the password and instantly unlock the PDF file for direct opening henceforth.

Adobe Acrobat DC Standard vs. Pro

Now that Adobe Acrobat DC is available in both Standard and Pro versions, it is prudent to compare the two so that you have an easy time settling on one. In this table, we will look at the various outstanding traits of each to give you a general picture of what to expect.

In this comparison, it is evident that Adobe Acrobat DC Pro wins although it is also good to add that the Standard edition is mostly used for personal or team use while the Pro edition is best-suited for professional use. But considering the extensive functions and availability on Mac, Acrobat DC Pro takes the day.

Pricing

While the free trial period will just give you a feel of the features for a short period, grabbing the paid version guarantees an uninterrupted workflow. Some of the benefits coming with the premium plan include the ability to access all the features from the web, mobile, and desktop platforms, 100GB cloud storage, access to Adobe Fonts and Adobe Portfolio. Here are the various plans available to users.

Conclusion

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is PDF software whose superiority and excellence are very much evident going by the features offered. In fact, there are no tools that come close to the depth of features offered by this tool.

And as much as Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is pricey, the experience you get makes it worth every dime you spend. Converting, editing, signing, protecting, among other PDF management options should be a walk in the park with Acrobat DC. Grab the free trial, test out the features, and decide whether to upgrade.