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Editor’s note
- Original review date: November 2024
- Issues with editing PDF content and line spacing are now fixed
- Prices have increased
Elsewhere, the feature set and workflow remain the same. But there’s another big change: price. And this is not a small increase either. Raising the monthly cost from $11.24 to $15 is a hefty increase (jumping from $135 a year to a total of $180), which sends this software to the upper end of its market. come on
The actual review follows.
Steve Clarke
Nitro PDF Pro – Now there’s a name that packs a powerful punch. The PDF editor is positioned as an essential tool for small businesses and individuals, and includes a large number of essential features such as PDF conversion, signatures, OCR, etc. Ideal, then, for improving workflow efficiency and productivity in a single tool.
Available for Windows and Mac, there is also a version of the PDF editor app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. But how do we measure up to the latest version of the best PDF editor software? We put it to the test.
Nitro PDF Pro 14: Pricing and Plans
- One-time purchase is available with volume licensing
Nitro PDF Pro has seen a few changes since its version 14 release, not the least of which is its pricing structure. Don’t worry: If you’re not a fan of subscription services (you know you’re in trouble when you’re starting to get into the car manufacturers’ act), and you need to find the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat. Running you: This multi-platform PDF editor can still be purchased outright for an off-fee of $180.
Yes, it is not cheap, and you have to pay for each device you want to use this software. Whether you need a PDF editor for Mac or Windows, the price per license is the same. Certainly, this is far and away the best free PDF editors available.
However, you now also have the option to subscribe to the service for .2 11.24 per month. That ends up being about $135 per person for the year.
Whichever route you choose, you’re offered a free 14-day trial, no credit card required (although you do need to set up a free account and give Nitro a valid email address, which has been pretty much de rigueur for most online services for a while now). So go to www.gonitro.com, and let’s check it out.
Nitro PDF Pro 14: Interface and Experience
- Clean and doesn’t get in the way
Launch the software, open an existing PDF, and Nitro PDF Pro’s interface is revealed to you.
The layout is very clear and simple: all the tools you need are at the top, in a row of large icons, displaying the main tools, with a toolbar below a toolbar, displaying additional ones (the selected main tool does not support this feature).
There’s a sidebar on the left-hand side, which by default shows thumbnails of all your PDF pages, but you can change it to show other useful information, like your annotations, or any included attachments, among others.
- Interface and Experience: 4/5
Nitro PDF Pro 14: Tools
- Pretty much everything you need to annotate and convert PDFs
Nitro PDF Pro aims to let you manipulate PDF documents, and it comes with all the tools you might expect.
For example, collaborate online. You have many ways to leave notes on pages. There is a highlighting tool that allows you to highlight text in different colors. You’ll get four default colors with the ability to create four custom ones, should you wish. You can also add underlines, strikethroughs to any part of the PDF you’re working on.
This is all most useful, but it can be hard to tell what changes you want to see with a little highlighter and a few lines above the text. This is where annotation tools come in.
Here, the various text boxes range from just a simple box to a comment, a thought bubble, a note (think of it as a post-breakup note), and a few others. You need more than enough to populate the PDF with as many comments as you need to convert to other team members.
It is also possible to edit the content of an existing PDF, of course, using the ‘correct text’ tool. Select a word, a sentence, or multiple paragraphs, and the tool will turn your selection into a replaceable text box.
We ran into an issue with the PDFs we experimented with: converting a section to editable text affected line spacing, often making paragraphs overlap the following. We tried with several PDFs. We faced the same problem with each of them.
Although there are many tools available for editing text, such as changing its color, italicizing it, changing its alignment, etc., we couldn’t find anything that changed the line spacing. There are other competing software that do a better job of preserving the format of a document, such as Easeus PDF Editor.
Nitro PDF Pro 14: Document Creation
- Start from scratch and convert to other formats
Editing PDFs is one thing, but like many others, Nitro PDF Pro lets you create documents using all of the tools mentioned above, and more. It even includes form building, which Adobe Acrobat can struggle to offer. This is a useful addition because it allows you to stay in the same app while working on PDFs.
But people don’t always work in a single PDF editor app, and that’s where Nitro Formatting comes into its own.
Like similar PDF editing software—think Foxit PDF Editor or Riddle PDF Expert—NitroPDF Pro can convert PDFs to other formats, and vice versa.
However, it does not do this through a dedicated ‘convert’ command. Instead, the process is much more intuitive: Need to convert Word to PDF? Go to File > Open, find it, and Nitro will automatically convert it for you as soon as it opens in the software.
Nitro PDF Pro is compatible with many file formats, including images. When it encounters a file that has no selectable text in it, it will offer to start the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process. Choose the language the document is in, and Nitro gets to work. We found the results very acceptable, and of course, they are editable.
If you need to convert the PDF to a different format, just go to File > Export. You have a few options at your disposal, such as Microsoft Office files – Nitro is easily one of the best PDF to Excel converters and PDF to PowerPoint converters on the market. There’s also RTF, TXT, a handful of image formats, and PDF/A – used for archival purposes.
Of course, you can’t do it all with Nitro PDF Pro: it includes other features, including being able to merge PDFs from emails to text files to spreadsheets, condense them into a single, searchable PDF, digitally document documents, and create tables of contents.
Nitro PDF Pro 14: Scorecard
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Row 0 – Cell 1 | Row 0 – Cell 2 |
Pricing | No subscriptions – only one-time perpetual license | 4/5 |
Interface and experience | Clean, modern and easy to use | 4/5 |
tools | Everything you need to edit and annotate documents | 4/5 |
PDF creation | Excellent creation and conversion tools | 4/5 |
Should I buy Nitro PDF Pro 14?
If you buy it…
You need a feature-rich PDF editor
Nitro PDF Pro offers you many tools that you will need to edit, annotate or even create a PDF document from scratch. You can import documents straight from your scanner, and its OCR capabilities are excellent. If you or your business often need to modify and annotate PDF documents, it’s worth downloading the free trial version and checking it out.
If you don’t buy it…
You are a casual user or your needs are simple
If your needs are simple, and you just want to browse through PDFs, Nitro PDF Pro risks being overkill. It may also not be ideal if you like to edit the content of a PDF without altering its formatting, especially the line spacing.
Alternatives
For additional PDF editing software, we reviewed this The best Adobe Acrobat alternative You can download now.
