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Last year, I reviewed Exodus, an excellent online PDF editor well worth checking out (you can read my review here). But did you know that Zodo also offers a desktop version of their service for Mac, Windows and Linux?
After testing some of the best PDF editors and the best free PDF editors, I was curious to see how the downloadable Zodo PDF Studio desktop version compared to its online counterpart as well as other big players in the PDF space like Acrobat.
Zodo PDF Studio: Pricing and Plans
- Choosing a subscription or perpetual license is always welcome, and should be appreciated. The free trial is very short, so run the test you need right away to decide.
Whether you choose Zodo’s online service or its desktop version, if you opt for an annual contract (which will be about $10 per license), it will cost you the same. Choose to pay on a month-to-month basis, and the price changes to $13 online, and $20 for the desktop version.
If you’re sick of the back teeth of subscriptions, Xodo has you covered, offering you perpetual licenses for the desktop app for $240 per set.
Want to know about the service but don’t want to commit financially just yet? Then grab their 3-day free trial. All its features are unlocked and hopefully three days should give you enough time to check out the software, and decide if it’s right for you.
You can check it out on the official Zodo website by clicking here.
Zodo PDF Studio: Interface
- Offering multiple ways to access the same tool is a great thing… just the way the app is manuever setup could be given a little more love.
Launch Zodo and you’ll find the interface is… well. It doesn’t scream ‘modern design’, nor does it ooze nostalgic ’90s nostalgia. It’s just… okay. All the tools and icons you need are located at the top of the window, in a basic black and blue minimalist style. Really ok. It’s not just… that’s charming.
What is a nice touch, however, is that the first time you launch the app, it will automatically open a PDF that explains what its interface does. And where to find what you need. Full marks for this.
You will find that the tools are accessible in a number of ways. For example, by default, the ones you see are from the ‘Home’ menu, and you need to select text, search within the document, add a comment, highlight a section, even edit the content of the PDF, and add shapes, among others.
However, above these large icons is a thin menu bar, which lets you focus on specific types of tools, although you can already access most of them from ‘Home’. For example, if you want to add a comment to ‘Home’, click the ‘Comment’ icon to display a drop-down list with several options. But if you want to click on ‘Comment’ in the thin menu bar instead, those icons are replaced with a new set, showing you all that were in the drop-down list we just saw.
They are all the same tools, just available in different ways. This can be a little confusing, especially since the selected menu in that thin menu bar only has a subtle blue line below it, which can be easy to miss, leaving you to wonder why the icon isn’t showing up after you… until you realize you’re in the wrong menu.
Mac users have a third option through the system’s own menu bar, where you can also select all the tools you need. Don’t get me wrong: the options are nice, and being able to access the same device in different ways is a good design decision… I just wish the app select menu was at least prominently featured to reduce potential confusion.
Zodo PDF Studio: Tools
- Multiple tools, incredibly easy to use, even if their layout may feel awkward at first
To start using the tools, take a quick trip to the ‘File’ menu to open the current document, either from your computer, or directly through one of the various online storage services, such as OneDrive, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, or one of Zodo’s own ZodoDrive. This is also where you can create a new document, either from scratch, or by combining different files, such as images, a scan file, multiple files into one, or converting documents from MS Office or AutoCAD.
Once you’ve loaded a document, you’re free to annotate and modify it to your heart’s content. Note, highlighting, highlighting, adding shapes to masked areas is really easy on the PDF itself (although Redaction is a much better tool for this if the information needs to be sensitive and not fragmented – Zodo also supports this feature).
Rearranging pages and deleting some is a cinch and is done by the left, but perhaps the most interesting option is the ability to edit existing PDF content.
It’s not a feature that’s available from all PDF applications — in fact, it’s generally seen as one of the more advanced features, and not every app has a good one, so editing should work as much as possible.
I’m happy to report that the Zodo desktop app excels at editing existing content. When this tool is activated, you’ll see a faint blue rectangle around various text and image boxes in your document. Click on one to select it and move it around, or once selected, click inside the text box to replace its current content, using exactly the same font and size as the original. It no longer works like a word processor or desktop publishing application: you can’t link text boxes together and flow your copy from one to the other. This is for minor edits, and for changes that don’t require going back to the original document and making changes from there instead. But with these limitations in mind, for a PDF editing tool, it works surprisingly well.
The only tool I thought of was Snapshot, which, as the name suggests, allows you to take a screenshot of a selected portion of the PDF you’re working on. Sure, you have the option to choose its format (PNG, JPEG, TIFF or GIF), or send it straight to the printer – which is novel. But that’s a minor quibble.
All in all, despite its icon design or tool organization that could do with a little love, the Zodo desktop app is a great PDF editor that makes even the toughest tasks easy.
Should I buy the Zodo PDF Studio desktop app?
If you buy it…
You’re looking for a desktop PDF editor (ideal for increasing security on an online service), with a load of tools that are easy to use, and include well-implemented, powerful advanced features.
If you don’t buy it…
You only need to make some changes to the PDF, like delete a page, or reorder another one, but all the other tools that Zodo has are simply overkill for your needs.
For more productivity tools, we tested this The best free PDF readers, The best PDF reader for Macfor , for , for , . And The best PDF readers on Android.
1 Comment
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