WinPDFEditor

WinPDFEditor is designed for editing PDF files and turning them into other formats, namely DOC, RTF, TXT, JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIF, HTML and SWF format. Before proceeding, users should know that the app cannot actually edit existing elements from PDFs, but only add new ones instead.

The installation procedure quick and uneventful. At startup it is possible to select one of the two modules to work with, between editing and conversion. The interface for both components is user-friendly, containing intuitive options.

In editor mode, the PDF pages can be separately accessed from a list or thumbnail view. Basically, users have to work with one page at a time. It is possible to add text and insert images (from JPG, BMP, PNG or GIF files), as well as customize font settings, colors and sizes.

Solid or dotted lines with custom thickness can be similarly applied to the document, and users may also resort to a standard pen, brush, line, rectangle or ellipse tool. Any of the new elements can be deleted with an eraser. Plus, all pages or just the current one can be rotated.

An undo function is also available for removing any mistakes. However, a more practical feature for the same purpose is represented by an object list. Basically, WinPDFEditor records all changes and lets users eliminate any specific actions. For example, they can keep the last operation (e.g. added text) and remove just the previous one (e.g. added lines). Selected objects can be copied and inserted in the same position in all the other PDF pages with the click of a button.

Theoretically, a selection tool can be used for re-arranging the new elements in the PDF, but it wasn't always effective during our evaluation. We can say the same thing for other drawing tools as well: applying brush strokes too fast creates separate squares instead of a smooth motion, the eraser does not always work, and so on. Changes can be overwritten to the PDF file or saved to a new one.

The PDF converter is much simpler to work with. Conversion operations can be carried out in single or batch mode, by inserting PDFs from file or entire directories. On the other hand, the file browser does not allow multiple selections, so users are restricted to inserting one PDF at a time in the batch list (as an alternative to using the tree view to select directories).

Apart from pointing out the output directory and file format, it is possible to pick a page range by establishing the first and last page. Output quality is not that good, though. For example, the text structure was not preserved during our evaluation after WinPDFEditor converted a PDF into DOC format.

The app is light on the system resources and carries out conversion jobs fast. There were no stability issues during our evaluation. However, taking into account the previously described inconveniences and the fact that existing elements from PDFs cannot be actually modified, WinPDFEditor is simply too expensive.