Why is PDF editing so expensive?

[StrayGuitarist]

All I wanna do is edit some character sheets for my tabletop game, but Adobe Acrobat is either part of a $15/mo subscription plan (WITH AN ANNUAL CONTRACT, $22 WITHOUT), or a 1-time purchase for 300 dollars! Why!? Even alternative programs average about $99. Why is it that I can get a free program that can handle almost any video file flawlessly (VLC Media player), a free program that can uncompress almost any compressed package, and compress files with extensive options and various formats (7-Zip), but when I just want to put a name on a character sheet, it's $300. 

[Slottr]

Welcome to Adobe's monopoly.

 

There's plenty of other free pdf editors though 

[TrigrH]

and this is why people pirate

[StrayGuitarist]

1 minute ago, campy said:

man wait til you see the price of solidworks

its one of those things that every business needs and will pay for, so adobe uses the mix they have of being a software monopoly, the respected standard for many types of software, and the constant need for their softwares capabilities in order to charge whatever the hell they want

Yeah, it's pretty assy. This is why I try to support competition (when the competition is good) and prevent monopoly like this.

 

7 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

and this is why people pirate

I would too if my ISP didn't threaten to shut down my service, so there's no real way out for me.

[Aimi]

5 minutes ago, StrayGuitarist said:

I would too if my ISP didn't threaten to shut down my service, so there's no real way out for me.

It's called a VPN, and it's a blessing. Just make sure you pick a good one if you take that route.

[StrayGuitarist]

Just now, Aimi said:

It's called a VPN, and it's a blessing. Just make sure you pick a good one if you take that route.

And it'll be a lifesaver once I can pick one to subscribe to. I know LTT has been sponsored by PIA, but, do you have any experience with them?

[Aimi]

Just now, StrayGuitarist said:

And it'll be a lifesaver once I can pick one to subscribe to. I know LTT has been sponsored by PIA, but, do you have any experience with them?

NordVPN is considered one of the best, but I personally go with ExpressVPN since the speeds aren't horrid.

[DrMacintosh]

You know macOS has been doing this for years with the built in Preview.app

 

It's really sad to see companies like Adobe be able to capitalize on Microsoft s laziness. 

[StrayGuitarist]

33 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

You know macOS has been doing this for years with the built in Preview.app

 

It's really sad to see companies like Adobe be able to capitalize on Microsoft s laziness. 

Yeah! I used to use my Macbook Pro for that, but it died recently and I haven't had the money to replace it. It's a shame, I love MacOS dearly.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If all you are doing is just creating a PDF from a document, such as an online receipt, you can use a program called a virtual printer (PDFCreator is my favorite). A virtual printer, when installed, appears in the the print window as a printer but, when you select it and click on print, it uses the data that normally goes to a physical printer to create a PDF. I frequently use it to create PDFs of receipts of online purchases than can only be printed instead of downloaded.

 

Another free way to create and edit the PDFs you created is to use LibreOffice. Some of its apps, such as Writer and Calc, will allow you to save work as a PDF. It also has an option to embed the file you are working on into that PDF. That way, if you ever want to edit the PDF, just open it in the LibreOffice app it was created in and the embedded file will open which you can then edit. I create most of my PDFs using LibreOffice now.

 

Whie it probably galls you to have to pay for a PDF creation/editing program, an excellent one is Qoppa's PDFStudio. I recommend getting the Pro version even though it costs more. It's the equivalent of Adobe Acrobat Standard and then some for much less than Acrobat will cost in the long run now that you essentially rent Acrobat. Also, when a new version of PDF Studio comes out, you can still safely use the old version if you want. I have version 12 and love it! It was well worth the money. I didn't upgrade when the next version came out because I ddidn't need any of the new features (and I'm cheap).

 

Some of the free PDF readers, such as Foxit, have limited PDF editing and creation abilities.

[homeap5]

5 hours ago, StrayGuitarist said:

All I wanna do is edit some character sheets for my tabletop game, but Adobe Acrobat is either part of a $15/mo subscription plan (WITH AN ANNUAL CONTRACT, $22 WITHOUT), or a 1-time purchase for 300 dollars! Why!? Even alternative programs average about $99. Why is it that I can get a free program that can handle almost any video file flawlessly (VLC Media player), a free program that can uncompress almost any compressed package, and compress files with extensive options and various formats (7-Zip), but when I just want to put a name on a character sheet, it's $300. 

Personally, I never understand Adobe Acrobat "greatness". It is for me most overpriced piece of software on PC. It costs more than many other graphics editors (that can export PDF too) without even basic functionality of them. For sure Acrobat has some very useful functions and options that makes it so expensive, but I don't know what. I really want some day someone explain me why it costs so much. I can mix vector graphics with bitmap and text in Corel (for example) which is expensive too, but not that much (and I know what I pay for).

 

And yes - fully functional alternatives may be expensive too (like this one).

 

If someone sends me PDF, then I don't really know what I get - it can contains loseless compressed bitmaps, jpegs, vector, text etc. Probably even movies when you encode them using some basic codec. Format (or container) for everything.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

When PDF was first introduced in the early '90s, it was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe. It became a popular business office file format because of its stabilty when used crossplatform, such as Windows to Mac or even between versions of Windows. It didn't become an open standard until 2008 but, by that time, Adobe office products were firmly entrenched in business settings, much like MS Office.

 

I first started using PDFs because graphics containing documents I created in Word 2003 couldn't be read in earlier versions of Word. I used mostly virtuaI printers to create basic PDFs but often found myself needing more functionality when creating PDFs than I got from virtual printers and from within MS Word (virtual printers often rotated pages and could not resize pages when a document had different sized pages).

 

When I bought my first Duplexing ADF scanner (English translation: Automatic Document Feed multipage scanner that scanned both sides of a document at the same time), it came with a copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard. Once I started fooling around with it (thankfully, there were no children as a result), I quickly became hooked on the abilities of a full blown PDF creator and editor and (begrudgingly) paid for the upgrades as required.

 

I ditched Acrobat Standard altogether when Adobe went to a cloud based, subscription model (not to mention that Adobe had been slowly paring features from Standard). I now use Qoppa's PDF Studio Pro because it costs considerably less, I will be able to continue to use it when I switch to Linux, and it isn't dependent on an internet connection (similar reasons to why I have quit using MS Office). 

[LogicalDrm]

I agree on that you should use another editor and only virtual print to PDF. Microsoft's default work fine for most of the stuff while my to-go is PrimoPDF.