The desktop and web tools that went before aren’t so simple, and not all of them are free. But while Adobe Acrobat still reigns supreme, there are plenty of other ways to rip, mix and burn your PDFs.
RIP PDFs ONLINE
Adobe's - Create PDF Online takes your file in a number of formats (MS Office, RTF, AutoCAD) or will take a whack at OCR (optical character recognition) of your scanned docs. Pick your shots with this super-service, you only get five before they start asking for money.
PDF Online - BCL Technology’s PDF Online takes almost anything you’ll feed it and emails it back as a PDF.
PDF-o-matic - ESP’s PDF-o-matic takes web pages and turns them into PDFs, handy for offline viewing or integrating into papers or presentations.
Neevia online converter - Neevia’s online PDF masher offers fine control of settings like image resolution and PDF version compatibility.
PDF4U - PDF4U is unlimited in quantity but limited in size. As in, 35K. So don’t attempt to send them your 5,000 page illustrated history of the avocado.
Sanface - Sanface offers Text2PDF, which takes text pasted into a window and PDFs it right there.
DrawLoop - Then there’s DrawLoop’s Loop Service that swallows your Word docs, Excel, PDFs and the rest and spits out a single PDF.
Zamzar - Zamzar will convert any document to just about any other format–including PDF.
DESKTOP RIPPING
Ghostscript is the venerable old-skool PDF hack. It’s been around for years, and it’s free. Caveat: Not for the faint-hearted, this is a classic engineer’s dream that will seem as user-friendly as DOS to some people.
doPDF - Softland’s doPDF is a free printer driver that hooks into Windows and makes PDFs from any app that has a print command.
PDF995 - PDF995’s been around for years, powering its decent—for free, at least—tools by sticking ads in them. Lots of users means lots of stability, for what it’s worth.
Google Docs - Google Docs has a save-as-PDF function, too, and offers simple routes to sharing.
2007 Microsoft Office Add-in - This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs.
PrimoPDF - ActivePDF’s PrimoPDF is pretty great for a free PDF toaster.
CutePDF - Writer is just that–and free, too.
PDF Creator - Ditto the free part with SourceForge’s PDF Creator.
Jaws PDF Creator - Global Graphics Jaws PDF Creator probably has the most street cred of the Acrobat alternative apps.
Nitro PDF - Australian software developers Arts PDF is an up-and-coming competitor to Jaws.
OpenOffice - Don’t forget good old OpenOffice, which can toast documents into PDF.
Nuance’s PDF Converter - Does cost some bread, but it opens up a lot of cool features you never knew you couldn’t live without (gives your right-clicking ring finger more PDF power than you thought was possible).
e-PDF Converter - Document Converter which can convert PDF, PS, DOC, RTF, PPT, XLS, etc. documents to PDF, Postscript, TIFF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, etc. documents.
Smart PDF Converter - Convert your files from PDF to DOC or another file format. The program works on all Windows systems.
DocuDesk’s deskPDF - Claims to work with 300 different apps, including some pretty heavy graphics tools.
Bluebeam PDF Revu - Costs more than most desktop apps not named Acrobat, but its hooks into Office save time and clicks.
Foxit Reader - At one point, Larry Page lobbied for putting the thinner Foxit Reader in the Google Pack mobile utilities download, but the team convinced him that Adobe Reader was a better fit. For a lot of people, this company’s PDF tools are where price meets performance. The company’s Text Viewer utility extracts text into editable files.
MIX YOUR PDFs
CT’s free PDF Text Reader - Extracts text from PDF files for editing and reuse in your blogs or wherever else.
ABBYY PDF Transformer - Opens a PDF and allows the unthinkable: editing!
Apago - Claim to fame is PDF Shrink and PDF Optimizer, which throw out all the junk in a PDF file to make it thin-as-possible for uploading to the Web—but they’ve recently expanded their line of widgets to do more.
Arts PDF - PDF Linker plugs in to Acrobat and checks links and bookmarks, a painful manual process for long or short-complicated PDFs.
PDF2Text - Converts PDF to text or XML files.
Advanced PDF Tools - Lets you tweak many settings in a document, from page orientation to how it opens and metadata (i.e. you can stash “Paris Hilton nude” in this hidden data field and amp up your document’s download numbers).
PDF-Tools Batch Stamp - Protect your PDF content by stamping your logo–or anything else–on every page with PDF-Tools Batch Stamp Tool.
Adobe Accessibility - If anyone who is blind or otherwise visually impared will read your document, read Adobe’s accessibility tutorials for good advice on design and formatting that makes it easier for that audience to consume your content whether or not you’re using Acrobat to toast your PDFs.
BURN PDFs
Scribd - Wants to be the YouTube (YouTube) of document sharing. PDF insiders also know that the site is a good hack for making quality files for free because it offers one-document-at-a-time access to Cadillac Adobe server software.
4Shared - Offers free space and PDF document-sharing access.
DriveHQ - Offers sharing as one of its many services, including online backup.
My Docs Online - A subscription service with no maximum file-upload restriction.
RIP PDFs ONLINE
Adobe's - Create PDF Online takes your file in a number of formats (MS Office, RTF, AutoCAD) or will take a whack at OCR (optical character recognition) of your scanned docs. Pick your shots with this super-service, you only get five before they start asking for money.
PDF Online - BCL Technology’s PDF Online takes almost anything you’ll feed it and emails it back as a PDF.
PDF-o-matic - ESP’s PDF-o-matic takes web pages and turns them into PDFs, handy for offline viewing or integrating into papers or presentations.
Neevia online converter - Neevia’s online PDF masher offers fine control of settings like image resolution and PDF version compatibility.
PDF4U - PDF4U is unlimited in quantity but limited in size. As in, 35K. So don’t attempt to send them your 5,000 page illustrated history of the avocado.
Sanface - Sanface offers Text2PDF, which takes text pasted into a window and PDFs it right there.
DrawLoop - Then there’s DrawLoop’s Loop Service that swallows your Word docs, Excel, PDFs and the rest and spits out a single PDF.
Zamzar - Zamzar will convert any document to just about any other format–including PDF.
DESKTOP RIPPING
Ghostscript is the venerable old-skool PDF hack. It’s been around for years, and it’s free. Caveat: Not for the faint-hearted, this is a classic engineer’s dream that will seem as user-friendly as DOS to some people.
doPDF - Softland’s doPDF is a free printer driver that hooks into Windows and makes PDFs from any app that has a print command.
PDF995 - PDF995’s been around for years, powering its decent—for free, at least—tools by sticking ads in them. Lots of users means lots of stability, for what it’s worth.
Google Docs - Google Docs has a save-as-PDF function, too, and offers simple routes to sharing.
2007 Microsoft Office Add-in - This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs.
PrimoPDF - ActivePDF’s PrimoPDF is pretty great for a free PDF toaster.
CutePDF - Writer is just that–and free, too.
PDF Creator - Ditto the free part with SourceForge’s PDF Creator.
Jaws PDF Creator - Global Graphics Jaws PDF Creator probably has the most street cred of the Acrobat alternative apps.
Nitro PDF - Australian software developers Arts PDF is an up-and-coming competitor to Jaws.
OpenOffice - Don’t forget good old OpenOffice, which can toast documents into PDF.
Nuance’s PDF Converter - Does cost some bread, but it opens up a lot of cool features you never knew you couldn’t live without (gives your right-clicking ring finger more PDF power than you thought was possible).
e-PDF Converter - Document Converter which can convert PDF, PS, DOC, RTF, PPT, XLS, etc. documents to PDF, Postscript, TIFF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, etc. documents.
Smart PDF Converter - Convert your files from PDF to DOC or another file format. The program works on all Windows systems.
DocuDesk’s deskPDF - Claims to work with 300 different apps, including some pretty heavy graphics tools.
Bluebeam PDF Revu - Costs more than most desktop apps not named Acrobat, but its hooks into Office save time and clicks.
Foxit Reader - At one point, Larry Page lobbied for putting the thinner Foxit Reader in the Google Pack mobile utilities download, but the team convinced him that Adobe Reader was a better fit. For a lot of people, this company’s PDF tools are where price meets performance. The company’s Text Viewer utility extracts text into editable files.
MIX YOUR PDFs
CT’s free PDF Text Reader - Extracts text from PDF files for editing and reuse in your blogs or wherever else.
ABBYY PDF Transformer - Opens a PDF and allows the unthinkable: editing!
Apago - Claim to fame is PDF Shrink and PDF Optimizer, which throw out all the junk in a PDF file to make it thin-as-possible for uploading to the Web—but they’ve recently expanded their line of widgets to do more.
Arts PDF - PDF Linker plugs in to Acrobat and checks links and bookmarks, a painful manual process for long or short-complicated PDFs.
PDF2Text - Converts PDF to text or XML files.
Advanced PDF Tools - Lets you tweak many settings in a document, from page orientation to how it opens and metadata (i.e. you can stash “Paris Hilton nude” in this hidden data field and amp up your document’s download numbers).
PDF-Tools Batch Stamp - Protect your PDF content by stamping your logo–or anything else–on every page with PDF-Tools Batch Stamp Tool.
Adobe Accessibility - If anyone who is blind or otherwise visually impared will read your document, read Adobe’s accessibility tutorials for good advice on design and formatting that makes it easier for that audience to consume your content whether or not you’re using Acrobat to toast your PDFs.
BURN PDFs
Scribd - Wants to be the YouTube (YouTube) of document sharing. PDF insiders also know that the site is a good hack for making quality files for free because it offers one-document-at-a-time access to Cadillac Adobe server software.
4Shared - Offers free space and PDF document-sharing access.
DriveHQ - Offers sharing as one of its many services, including online backup.
My Docs Online - A subscription service with no maximum file-upload restriction.