PDF Expert – Edit, Sign PDFs App Reviews

I mostly use it to do textbook chapter reading, with highlighting for questions for tests I’m writing. I was very pleasantly surprised that I was also able to edit the source .pdf file in this version, as well. The new interface is usable and attractive, and well organized (caveat: I haven’t poked around into the edges or corners yet).

I’ve been so frustrated by working with PDFs using Adobe Acrobat. Now PDF Expert has solved my problems. I can easily fill in forms, annotate and merge pages from 2 different PDFs. And without all the complicated, unnecessary and often annoying features contained in bloated Adobe Acrobat. Love this app! Highly recommended to anyone who wants to edit PDFs using an app that is simple and straightforward.

Excellent application with great design. Use it all the time and can’t recommend it enough.

Please fix the rating request feature. This is the best pdf app around and I really love using it, but I should not have to repeatedly rate this app.

I actually have the full blown version of Adobe Acrobat and I perfer using PDF Expert 2 more. It’s easy, it’s fast and it’s flawless in it’s execution. To have it sync’d up with my iOS files is a great plus. If you want GREAT PDF editing at a great price, here you go, PDF Expert 2.

New PDF Expert 2 features that don’t seem to work for me: - the ability to edit annotations made in another app (e.g., Preview, Acrobat, etc.). When I did this in PDF Expert 1, it automatically applied a (red) border of the text box when I click on it — annoying. In PDF Expert 2, it applies a red border to the bottom of the annonation and then the app immediately crashes. (I’ve reported it). Points in favor of PDF Expert 2 - Handoff between iOS and OS X. That actually improves one of my workflows. You definitely don’t get that with Preview or Acrobat Pro. - Frequent updates and improvements (Preview and Adobe Acrobat are AWFUL about this). - Updates that address my my previous complaints(!): For instance: (1) chaning highlighting color was made easier, (2) the ability to move sidebars was added, (3) the ability to edit the PDFs text was added, etc. Stuff that I still can’t do in PDF Expert 2 - the ability to scroll through PDF while changing name of PDF, adding Finder tags, etc — i.e., when the “rename” prompt is covering the PDF. - see nested bookmarks (or table of contents): nested items do not show up in bookmark sidebar (and they do in Preview, Acrobat, etc.); only the first level of contents/bookmarks show up. - the ability to search for specific strings of letters (e.g., searching “aid” returns said, etc. Preview allows searches to search with quotes to search only for ‘aid’ — i.e., by typing “aid” into search box) - the ability to replace a section of highlighting with highlighting of a different color by simply re-highlighting something in a different color. As it is, PDF Expert 2 *blend* the two colors instead of replacing one color with the new color. (This can easily be done in Preview and it’s crucial to my workflows). - better features: OCR, compression, metadata and hidden data removal, etc. Stuff I want from PDF Expert - keyboard shortcuts for each highlighting color (e.g., ⌘⌅Y for yellow, ⌘⌅B for blue, etc.) - less reliance on sidebars. - an explanation of whether PDF Expert improves upon Preview’s more hidden (but still sort of famous) issues. E.g., Preview’s memory leaks, Preview’s proclivity to drastically increase the size of a PDF (e.g., 3mb PDF turns into a 12mb PDF when it is opened and then saved by Preview, etc.) - [another thing that Readdle addressed with an update] The Verdict(s)? - Overall, Preview and PDF Expert are tied (even though each does a few things that the other doesn’t), *but* Preview is free and PDF Expert 2 is not. So Preview wins. - Acrobat Pro offers LOADS more features than PDF Expert 2, so Acrobat Pro wins by long shot! There are two things PDF Expert 2 could do to compete with the available alternatives: 1. Outperform Preview (not just match it) so as to be worth paying for the app when a free alternative like Preview is available 2. Offer pro-level features to compete with Acrobat Pro. (It’s started to do this, but it’s got a ways to go: e.g., OCR, compression, hidden data, etc.). 3. Drastically reduce the price of PDF Expert 2 (to something that seems negligibly different than “free”) so that it compares better to Preview. If (1) and (2) were done, I would recommend PDF Expert 2 to EVERYONE — even if the price stayed the same. (Full disclosure: I’d love to recommend something besides Acrobat Pro. And I’d love to have an affordable, better alternative to Apple’s Preview. I really would. I really hope PDF Expert 2 affords me the opportunity someday.)

There are some great features, like the tile view to rearrange pages which Apple’s native Preview doesn’t have, but many of the other features are less efficient. To rotate a page in Preview, for example, you simply click the toolbar button and it rotates the page to the left - which is the direction that almost all my pages seem to need rotating. In PDF Expert, you need to find the page in the sidebar, right click the page, then select rotate - this gets pretty tedious especially when you want to rotate to the left, in which case you need to right click, select menu item, right click, select menu item, right click, select menu item…. In Preview, you simply click the toolbar icon three times: click click click and you’re done. Another frustration is when you command-W to close a window, it leaves this annoying “recent files” splash page type thing that you then have to close every time you want to simply close a window, it keeps popping up. No option in the settings to disable this unnecessary, unuseful extra step. If they were to streamline some of the most common things you are likely to do - like open and close a document, rotate a page, etc - then I would increase to five stars. Until then, it’s just more cumbersome and slower to use than Apple’s free Preview.

I’ve been using this program since the beginning of the year to add text to PDF medical forms for my job. I made the mistake of updating and now when I click to insert text I have to click away from the text and then back to the new area to add more (before I could reapply a new text box in close proximity to an old one). It’s also more difficult to drag and move text boxes. Before the update I would have given it 5 stars. I wish I could revert!

I jumped from Preview to PDF Expert and love the application so far. Annotating and signing my PDFs has become simple and the application is very responsive while getting great support from the developers. Keep up the good work!

This program is amazing! I am happy to give it 5 stars. My project was to combine just over 100 images with a brief description of each. I had sorted the images chronologically, and had the accompanying descriptions sorted to go with them. I could not figure out a way to put the images and descriptions. I mentioned my problem to a computer geek friend. He immediately steered me towards a PDF editor, but, which one should I choose? I like cheap, so I looked at the free ones first, then the modestly priced ones. PDF Editor was a bit pricey at $59, but my project is a tender one, preserving memoirs of a 97 year old WWII bomber pilot. I thought I would rather err on the side of spending more than risking jeopardizing the projects. The reviews of PDF Expert 2 were consistently great, so I decided to go with your program. That was a good decision. Since then, I have ventured into several other projects. Each time, the results were great. I had a little difficulty with the learning curve, about what I expected. I was able to import a Word document that I had created with the captions for each picture, then used the “image import” tool to upload the images. I would buy it again in a heartbeat. Thank you for providing such a program.

I use this product in a professional capacity every day and couldn’t be more pleased. Preview was not cutting it for my needs, and I was looking for something that was fast but offered improved stability and funcitonality. PDF Expert really hit the nail on the head. I would recommend the product to anyone who needs reliable access to their PDFs.

The latest version of PDF Expert really shines when it comes to working with content across the desktop and iPad. In the past, I’ve used things like Dropbox to sync PDF files in preparation for meetings, conferences and the like. The ability to seamlessly sync is much easier.

Well, I have exactly the problem that app_whiz had: the “editor” can’t edit without destroying the text formatting. It costed me $60 and I couldn’t do the basic task of deleting and adding a new date in a syllabus. The app took my money ($60!!!) and messed up my syllabus. Great!

Love this app. I use it daily on pdf files and books. Its well worth the $

PDF Expert is an extremely good product and I use it on my MacPro , iPhone and iPad. I use it mainly for proof-reading, reviewing notes and filling in forms. Working across various devices is easy and comfortable. The only issue I have is that working through iCloud does not seem to work very well: for example, quite often documents are shown in my iCloud account on my iPad but not necessarily on my Mac. That problem is usually solved by restarting the Mac, but that cannot be a long-term solution. I am not sure this is a PDF Expert or an Apple issue, I could not find further information on the PDF Expert site.

This is a great app for reading PDFs. Clean, unfussy interface and nice annotation and note tools. I read a lot of technical papers online and this is the best app I’ve found for that purpose. Perhaps not all of the features that Acrobat Pro has, but PDF2 definitely has better usability. If you read a lot this makes a big difference in the end.

I use external screen. Each time I change focus of pointer from PDF Expert 2 to external screen, it keep scroll slowly up and can not be stopped. I can’t use it to read any more. I hate this bug and it already exists for serval versions.

I’m a resident physican that often reviews journal articles and use this application daily to organize and notate the articles. Best PDF manager I’ve used to date.

I bought this app because I have trusted the iPad version for years. This is the best of the best and on the Mac it is FANTASTIC! Readdle does not dissapoint and this piece of software is a materpiece. Nice work!! Fantastic!

Just like the iPhone and iPad version of the app, when upgraded to macOS Sierra, this app on mac doesn’t work well. There are double images for almost every word on an OCRed file. This makes most of the OCRed files unreadable. I give a feedback to the iPhone and iPad version, but so far no improvement whatsoever is anywhere.