Editing app/drawing on PDFs

There's a fabulous Mac OS X application called PDFPen from Smile software; it even has proofreading marks. (http://www.smilesoftware.com/PDFpen/); they do not make a Windows version.

You can add annotations with Acrobat's free reader; this includes stickie notes, and the ability to draw shapes or highlight text.

The Comment and Tracking features in Microsoft Word may be of use.

Medievalist said:

(http://www.smilesoftware.com/PDFpen/); they do not make a Windows version.

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Sigh.

Adobe's free reader will do this on windows. Also Photo shop (but if your going to buy that you might as well buy Adobe acrobat).

Many image programs will open pdfs and let you draw on them. I do this in paint shop pro for some of my dnd character sheets.

mommyjo2 said:

I want to actually write on the pages- like handwriting, doodles, etc.

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Well, both Photoshop, and its cheaper cousin Photoshop Elements, have a pencil tool. With a tablet or some other device, you can use that to doodle or write on a PDF.

Photoslop Elements can mark up a PDF as an image, and save it as an image. Or use a free PDF converter like PDF Creator to "print" the marked-up image as PDF.

A simpler cheap solution is IrfanView, which can open PDF (again, as an image), mark it up, and save it as a PDF -- but in both these cases, you don't have the original PDF, only a PDF-ed image. In other words, it can't be edited again in a proper PDF editor. That probably isn't a problem, but I want to make the distiction here between an image in PDF format and a PDF document that has text and separate images in it.

To really edit PDF, you would need --lol-- a PDF editor. There are on line editors that you can use free -- http://www.pdfescape.com/

In the heavy-duty software department, NitroPDF is cheaper than Adobloat, and, judging by the performance of their free reader, just as good. The free Nitro reader can do notes, highlighting, and signatures.

Or, if you're ready for a real learning experience, Inkscape is a free vector drawing program that can handle PDF pretty well. It's awesome anyway.

I've heard good things about Scribus - not used it much myself, but from the little I've seen it looks pretty promising. It's open source, and works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I use PDFpen on Mac OS X, and iAnnotate on the iPad. Both retain the editable nature of the original PDF; they layer any annotations atop the original PDF's content, which is a big plus to me. (As opposed to converting everything to images, as happens with Irfanview and many other general-purpose solutions.)

Yes, I was thinking about Scribus too, but ran out of breath