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How to modify PDF files?

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Michael Todd

Michael Todd

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I need to modify and existing model and property release, add photos, and submit to an agency as a PDF file. Is there a good way to do this in CS2, or should I go ahead and purchase Adobe Acrobat?
--
peace

 
Buying Adobe Acrobat Professional is an obvious solution, although you have another popular option: buy a PDF print driver. These are basically programs that convert your "document" (can be anything) to a PDF.

One of the more popular ones is PDF995. It's very inexpensive and simply acts as a printer driver. When you get done with your document (whatever it is - image, doc, xls, txt), simply print it and select it as the printer - and it will create it as a PDF.
http://www.pdf995.com
  • I'm not affiliated with them, but have used their program for several years. There are others as well, this is just the one I use. :)
I also have Acrobat Pro for creating really custom PDF's, with forms, etc.
Hope this helps.
 
Michael Todd said:
I need to modify and existing model and property release, add
photos, and submit to an agency as a PDF file. Is there a good way
to do this in CS2, or should I go ahead and purchase Adobe Acrobat?
Click to expand...
Acrobat is the best when it comes to delivering files with permission based
info. You administrate the file yourself and lock down any added data, info
and access or printing rights. You can add in the whole contract and/or
released that can't be redacted from the file without administrative grant.

Expensive? Yes, but knowing your work, it would be valuable as you
work with art reproductions as well as photography. Especially your
scanned art files for giclee. Having data riders in each file is important
to trace the copyright like digital watermarking. Any good printer would
check the copyright before doing any production run. This is the best protection
you can have for a digital file.
 
Another alternative for printing documents into pdf is cutepdf writer available at
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

It's completely free and works quite well. For creating pdf documents from scratch I use LaTex. The learning curve is pretty steep and I've only used if for class papers and such, I dont' know how well suited it would be for what you have in mind.
 
for Acrobat Pro.

--
peace

 
Adobe acrobat Pro isn't as secure as some posters here have make out.

It is very easy to remove any lock-downs (eg disable printing etc) with products such as GhostScript.

If you are buying Acrobat because of the "security features" then save your money.

If you want to modify an existing PDF document, then buying a PDF Printer driver isn't a lot of help, as it only allows you to convert (say) a Word document to a PDF, it doesn't allow you to convert the PDF to a Word document first, so you are stuck with having to re-create the document in Word before you start.

To avoid this, use a product like SolidPDFConverter
http://www.soliddocuments.com
To convert the PDF document to a Word document to begin with.
(The Free version allows you to convert 1 page at a time)

Then after you have modified the document in Word you can use the PDF Printer driver to convert it back to a PDF.

SolidPDFConverter does a fantastic of converting a PDF to MS Word while keeping all of the formatting and images etc.

Graeme Falkner
 
Since you are submitting to an agency you should go with the standard for PDF files as opposed to sending a less than 100% Adobe acrobat pdf file created with some of these pdf creation utilities.

--
Retired commercial photog - enjoying shooting for myself again.
Hoping to see/shoot as much as I can before the eyes and legs gives way
 
Graeme Falkner said:
If you want to modify an existing PDF document, then buying a PDF
Printer driver isn't a lot of help, as it only allows you to
convert (say) a Word document to a PDF, it doesn't allow you to
convert the PDF to a Word document first, so you are stuck with
having to re-create the document in Word before you start.

To avoid this, use a product like SolidPDFConverter
http://www.soliddocuments.com
To convert the PDF document to a Word document to begin with.
(The Free version allows you to convert 1 page at a time)

Then after you have modified the document in Word you can use the
PDF Printer driver to convert it back to a PDF.
Click to expand...
Going back to Word from Acrobat isn't great in my experience - the intelligence of positioning, paragraph flow, headers and footers etc is necessarily lost once something has passed through a (virtual) printer driver. So only limited editing is practicable from there on.

One can directly correct text, move items around or delete them, add new items by merging from a different PDF, etc entirely within Acrobat - or one can get a cheaper PDF editing product like NitroPDF (there are others) which does much of that for a fraction of the cost.

I often want to join, split, crop, reorder pages, fix typos in a PDF... and Acrobat is IMO overkill for that kind of straightforward use.

OTOH - it is the gold standard if you do have specific needs beyond that.

RP
 
I open PDFs in adobe and make changes and then save as PDF often. When you open the PDFs you get a window where you can increase the dpi from the default up to anything you may need. Then when the are open you can add photos and text just like any image file. Then flatten the image and select the PDF file format when you save it. You do not need acrobat if you have PS
--
Tic Tic



Martin Greeson
 
If you like throwing money at Adobe for no real good reason, place your order.

If you simply want to be able to create and edit PDF's then download openoffice. Sure, the converters are nice, but they quite often produce less than perfect results. Openoffice is the 2nd best choice when it comes to creating and managing your PDF's

Did I mention Openoffice is free?

--
My Photoblog with a daily picture http://photoblog.shrinkpictures.com
 
Can Open Office actually open a PDF file? Or create a PDF file from a document?
--
Greg Koop
 
Acrobat Pro is the option of choice to modify text in a PDF file.

If you want to add photos/graphics to the document, use Adobe Illustrator [which will still allow the text to be editable].

Photoshop can also open PDF files, but you normally cannot use this to edit text; but it's useful for editing photos in a PDF file.
Illustrator and Photoshop can only open one page at a time from a PDF file.
 
Editing text was a real bear. No good. I added a photo and tried to save it as a PS PDF and there was some sort of error and it wouldn't save.

I can get Acrobat for around $150 (educator discount), so it's not too hateful.

If I was to use these other programs, would I have to use multiple programs, or just one? My immediate need is to open a .pdf file, add text and a photo, and save it as a .pdf file.

As far as making new PDFs, I might do that in the future, but I don't have an immediate need for it.

--
peace

 
It might be worth the time and effort to copy and paste the text out of the pdf and into Word. You can then modify it as you want, add photos etc. And after the initial time investment to fix it up after you c/p, you will also be able to modify it in the future if needed.
--
Greg Koop
 
It seems that it is only for writing PDF files, and I wasn't able to get the PDF document to transfer to something like Word satisfactorily, so that's out.

--
peace

 
Thanks, but Foxit is another converter. I need something where I can edit them. I guess I'll have to get out my wallet.

--
peace

 
NitroPDF editor/creator is pretty good at about $100 - otherwise Acrobat. No creator-only product will be enough for your purposes.

Pro version of Acrobat ($450) is probably not needed - Adobe do not make it particularly clear on their website, but the Acrobat Standard product ($300) has always been able to make edits - it's the free Reader that cannot. At least this has been the case with all previous versions (current is v9). I'm 98% sure that Acrobat Standard will be plenty.

To get an image into a PDF you can make a separate PDF that contains this image, then merge it into your file and copy/paste or move it into position within the PDF editor. There isn't the means to import or create something directly, except in Illustrator as described elsewhere - though Illustrator is not really aimed at this kind of task.

It's a difficult judgement whether to tweak what you have, or use it to re-author a new editable document in something like Word. But once you have the tools and skills, future such problems are easily solved.

RP
 
I've hesitated buying Acrobat for the moment and I've spent the past 2 hours trying to get CS2 to save a pdf file, which it won't.

I went to the Adobe web site and posted a message in their support forum, but it seems like other people are having the same problem.

I'm running CS2 on a WinXP machine. I open the file, work on it, try to save as .pdf or .psd and it tells me it cannot save due to a program error.

It's really frustrating.

--
peace

 
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