Adobe Pro but not rented...

[Jasandjules]

As per the title, I have Adobe Pro but I do not approve of renting software. Is there a software package I can buy that does the same as Adobe Pro? I just tried PDF pro but when converting a PDF to word the editing was poor and I need strong editing if I convert a file from PDF to word....

[Derek Smith]

Jasandjules said:

As per the title, I have Adobe Pro but I do not approve of renting software. Is there a software package I can buy that does the same as Adobe Pro? I just tried PDF pro but when converting a PDF to word the editing was poor and I need strong editing if I convert a file from PDF to word....

Affinity.

[MitchT]

I have Adobe CS5 Design Premium running on my Intel MacBook Pro and the Affinity apps running on my M2 MacBook Pro. I feel that Affinity is lacking some key features and it can be hard to work out how to achieve some things based on what I know from Adobe. I can't justify the monthly charge for Adobe Creative Cloud but if I could upgrade the Adobe collection for a reasonable one-off payment I probably would.

[Derek Smith]

Jasandjules said:

As per the title, I have Adobe Pro but I do not approve of renting software. Is there a software package I can buy that does the same as Adobe Pro? I just tried PDF pro but when converting a PDF to word the editing was poor and I need strong editing if I convert a file from PDF to word....

I'm not sure what your want from the software, but on the assumption that you want both a PDF creator and photo manipulation, then you'll need both Affinity Publisher and Photo. They integrate nicely. If you get all three Affinity products, with the addition of Designer, you can chop and change between each sub-programme. You might not think it means that much, until you use it.

The one-off payment lasts for years, five with Affinity 1, with 'free' updates. Canva have just bought Affinity, with, seemingly, the intent to be a challenger to Adobe, rather than be judged on its own merits, but have promised they will always have an 'outright purchase' option. Whether you believe them or not is up to you, but if you buy the 2-series now, it will always be yours.

[Murph7355]

How much of the functionality do you use?

Have you considered "Elements"?

[mmm-five]

Jasandjules said:

As per the title, I have Adobe Pro but I do not approve of renting software. Is there a software package I can buy that does the same as Adobe Pro? I just tried PDF pro but when converting a PDF to word the editing was poor and I need strong editing if I convert a file from PDF to word....

Do you need Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.), or just Acrobat Pro?

The last version of Acrobat Pro you could get on a perpetual licence was Acrobat Pro 2020.

There is Abbyy Finereader 15, which is about the only option that's better than Acrobat for OCR conversion, but it's a similar price to Acrobat Pro 2020...and that has gone subscription model too!

[Jasandjules]

I just need to be able to take a PDF and convert it to word where it can be edited properly (as in it is not pictures but an actual word document) and edit/highlight PDFs... Then add documents/files together to make one PDF.

[Mr-B]

Is this any good? https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/online/pdf-to-wor...

[David_M]

Jasandjules said:

I just need to be able to take a PDF and convert it to word where it can be edited properly (as in it is not pictures but an actual word document) and edit/highlight PDFs... Then add documents/files together to make one PDF.

If it is pdf manipulation that you need then look at pdf xchange editor - I think it is excellent and a one-off non-recurring licence is somewhere around £50.

Note that their website is bizarrely poor, but that does not reflect the quality of the software.

https://pdf-xchange.eu/shopgt/pdf-xchange-editor.h...

[mmm-five]

Jasandjules said:

I just need to be able to take a PDF and convert it to word where it can be edited properly (as in it is not pictures but an actual word document) and edit/highlight PDFs... Then add documents/files together to make one PDF.

In that case, have you tried Word's built in function? You just open the PDF in Word and it goes away and converts it.

[Zoon]

PDFgear

It's free and allows you to edit text in pdfs etc.

[Jasandjules]

mmm-five said:

Jasandjules said:

I just need to be able to take a PDF and convert it to word where it can be edited properly (as in it is not pictures but an actual word document) and edit/highlight PDFs... Then add documents/files together to make one PDF.

In that case, have you tried Word's built in function? You just open the PDF in Word and it goes away and converts it.

Yes but a few times it would mess up the formatting a lot of a PDF which then took ages to fix, but Adobe had it perfect most of the time.... I did used to change everything into word then try to PDF them into one filed but that is also time consuming, as the Adobe just allows me to take 5 pdfs and add them into one..

Admittedly sometimes it worked superbly.....

[mmm-five]

Jasandjules said:

Yes but a few times it would mess up the formatting a lot of a PDF which then took ages to fix, but Adobe had it perfect most of the time.... I did used to change everything into word then try to PDF them into one filed but that is also time consuming, as the Adobe just allows me to take 5 pdfs and add them into one..

Admittedly sometimes it worked superbly.....

I do a lot of PDF stuff, so the subscription pays for itself in time saved for me.

For a couple of times a month, not such a great proposition. The quality of the conversion will also depend on how the PDF was created in the first place, so some conversions will keep a lot of the formatting, but others will break a sentence into individual words, or part of words, which can be a pain to fix.

I prefer to do any small edits/formatting directly in the PDF, or bring it into InDesign or Illustrator.