Very few people actually understand the importance of a multi-functional PDF reader and editor. Unless you have got an urgent project at hand, and your current PDF reader is out of date it’s hard to realize the importance. Moreover, Mac users have the usual problem of compatibility. The only reason for this is a diversified world and usage of different operating systems worldwide. We are here to ease these difficulties and help you with a list of best PDF editor for Mac.
So, are you struggling to manage this increasingly complex workflow of research, design, or any work that demands a cross-platform and flexible array of documents ready at hand? Fret not! Go through this list and make things convenient for yourself. Yes, we know a recently updated PDF Editor would serve your needs, but which one would actually support most text and image formats? So, here we are with a list of 10 best PDF editor for Mac, some of which also serve cross-platform functionality. Scroll through our list, pick the best one and get your job done instantly!
What is the Best PDF Editor for Mac?
Here we’ve listed top 10 PDF editors. Our experts have researched thoroughly before preparing this list for you. So whichever you choose, be sure of its working efficiency. So without wasting another minute let’s start. Read on and be amazed at the different immensely versatile PDF editors for Mac:
PDF Expert
When it comes to PDF readers and editors, PDF Expert tops the lost. It is one of the premium apps of Readdle and has been one of the most reputed PDF processing software for the iOS platform. Recommended by Apple editors, this app has some of the unique features that PDF editors had been missing all this while.
Unique Features:
- Highly efficient in adding notations, annotations, and editing
- Ease of use
- Page organization is superfast
- More information:
- Due to a smooth scrolling facility and an efficient search function, the overall reading experience is hassle-free
Bottom line
While most programs distort the original resolution and format of the text, PDF Expert facilitates perfect editing, with quick paragraph identification, making it one of the best PDF editor for Mac. PDF Expert is compatible across all the older platforms of iOS as well as with all the Apple products such as iPhone, iPad, and Apple PCs. Not just seamless sharing, but you can also password-protect annotations and show them to particular people of your choice with this PDF Editor.
Mac Acrobat
After PDF Expert, the age-old Acrobat easily takes the second position on our list of the best PDF editor for Mac. Any computer user is sure to have come across this software, lingering in their desktops, and giving all the support that’s needed to open, edit, and annotate all kinds of PDF files. What’s more, the newly evolved look of Acrobat will definitely blow your mind. This powerful PDF Editor from Adobe, Acrobat XI, is the latest in the series, but it seems the company has ceased to continue further updates of this software.
Here are the unique features of this product:
- Word documents and other files akin to the format get seamlessly converted
- Efficient and automatic recognition of form field
- Superfast document comparison facility
- Great for annotations and collaborations
- Unlike other PDF Editors, Acrobat is extremely stable
Bottom line
Its advanced user interface has touch functionality along with state of the art compatibility, which makes sure it is compatible across platforms, devices, and operating systems such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. The offline working facility makes stuff convenient for you. If you are not comfortable with editing in Acrobat, converting the files into other formats such as DOC, DOCX, etc. is extremely easy. Acrobat’s main USP is, it lets you convert files without any loss of data, format, or resolution.
PDFelement
If you want everything to be ready, with an updated and highly user-friendly interface, save the internet scouting time for the best PDF editors and writers, PDFelement has got you covered. All you gotta do is update the software to its latest version to enjoy all its benefits.
Here are the unique features of this editor:
- The best part about PDFelement is its minimalist design. Everything is right in front of your eyes, so even first-timers won’t have to hover through the different options to find what they are looking for.
- It is fully compatible with the latest OS version of Mac, Catalina 10.15
- PDF creation and conversion from other formats is seamless and without any loss of quality
- Highly suitable for converting photos into PDFs.
- It provides a comprehensive set of PDF tools, batch processing, and OCR.
Bottom line
As the software is compatible with both Windows and Linux, it is excellent for office work because that requires frequent swapping between the OS. Creating editable PDFs and forms is seamless due to the highly efficient automatic form recognition feature. Along with that, One rad feature is exporting data from paper or other electronic forms directly into an Excel form. The intelligent editing feature lets you convert all files into PDF and vice-versa without losing the original format, styles, and fonts.
Phantom PDF
This is a program that borrows heavily from the pre-installed PDF editor of Mac, Preview. Originally a product of Foxit, Phantom PDF is a highly compatible editor across all Mac devices such as iPhone and iPads. While keeping the original program of Preview intact, Phantom has added a set of enhancement features like adding signatures, texts, and images, correcting typos, and highly sophisticated editing.
Have a look at its exciting features:
- Very easy and user-friendly interface
- The software possesses intuitive and efficient annotation properties
- The forms can be easily created from documents, and conversion of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files to PDFs takes place with minimum loss in resolution
- This software is highly suited for the conversion of large PowerPoint presentations as it focuses a lot on the preservation of detail
Bottom line
You can create attractive, interactive forms with checkboxes, tick boxes, signature fields, etc. Adding texts, signatures, and making amends to PDF files as well as using OCR for scanned documents can be done with perfect ease. This is why many people have reviewed it to be the best PDF editor for Mac. The best feature of this software is you can edit PDFs anytime and also store it into the cloud without any hassle. The cloud keeps updating itself and always stores backup, so you need not worry about any loss of data at all.
Preview
If you are not much of an internet-scout and still want to get the best of your PDF editor, you need to look too far. Mac has its very own PDF reader and editor that will serve all your reading, research, and editing needs. But yes, its functionality is limited and not as flexible and all-rounder as an editor as we have seen the case with other editors mentioned above. Even then, Preview belongs to the list of best PDF editor for Mac because of its minimalist and user-friendly interface, making it perfect for beginners.
The unique features of this software include:
- It’s a lightweight PDF reader and editor. Unlike other software of this domain, the full version of Preview is extremely lightweight and therefore requires very low configuration to run smoothly.
- Another feature that points to its usability is its ease of operations. Annotations and sharing or collaborating are very easy with this editor.
- Finally, it’s free!
Who doesn’t like free software that would complete all your reading tasks with perfect ease?
Bottom line
As mentioned before, including annotations is fast, so if you don’t find any reader online, Preview comes to great help. It also allows a simple drag and drop option to arrange pages, one of the best features of this product.
PDFpen
If you are more of a creative person who likes to annotate, take notes, and collaborate on research, but with an artistic touch, PDFpen has got you covered. It’s one of a kind PDF reader and editor that allows you to highlight, scribble, draw, strikethrough, underscore, you name it. It has a basic version as well as an advanced version, and the latter comes with even more surprises. It can be a one-stop solution to all your PDF reading and editing needs because it has so many options to look at, starting from smooth conversion to secure modification of errors in any PDF.
The unique features of this software are:
- One can use text blocks that are editable to correct, move, and copy texts.
- One of the prime features of this PDF editor is its ability to resize images without any loss of quality
- The advanced version comes with improved OCR technology that allows you to turn pictures of scanned books or texts into words that are editable. So, not only is this software great for editing, but it also proves its worth in archiving old books that do not have a soft copy on the web.
Bottom line
Talking from the artistic point of view, this editor has a lot of scope for drawing and scribbling. So, once you run the software on your iPad or via a pen tab, drawing or illustrating becomes doubly smooth. Merging documents, or deleting the pages, get very smooth with this software. Moreover, if you are looking at rearranging pages or signing the PDFs, with PDFpen, it’s a cakewalk.
PDF Nomad
One of the most carefully styled PDF editors currently on the market, PDF Nomad, is a sleek and modern editor that comes with loads of surprises for researchers. That’s because this software has made everything related to research work so very simple, smooth, and easy. But the usual conundrum that PDF editors face is that with increased sophistication, the user interface gets complex and difficult to navigate. But this is where Nomad works its charm with its communicative interface, also allowing you to merge multiple documents, rearrange pages of documents, or resize whole documents to a different set of dimensions without losing a single bit in terms of quality.
Here are the unique features:
- We were really amazed at one feature, which allows you to export an entire document as a spoken sound file. So, sitting at home, you can easily edit novels into audio-novels, and that too, without the hassle of hiring anyone else for the job.
- Resizing is particularly easy with the drag and drop option, and with that, you can shift the contents of the pages as well.
Bottom line
You can split documents into odd/even pages, as well as break the PDFs into single pages. This comes to great use, especially when you need to send a particular page for annotation or collaboration, and don’t want to make the transit cumbersome. You can export the individual pages as bitmaps.
Master PDF Editor
If you would want to ignore the messy and complicated sets of software and would prefer a straightforward PDF editor that’s also easy to use, Master PDF Editor can be your go-to. But this doesn’t mean it misses out on the basic or even multi-functional features. What makes it rank among the best PDF editor for Mac is its lightweight and minimalist design. But here’s the catch, despite its low system requirements, it’s pretty fast and can handle larger files like a piece of cake. So, it is definitely a PDF Editor worthy of checking out.
Here are the exciting features of this software:
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is ultra-smooth with Master PDF Editor. We agree this is a feature that is present in almost all the PDF editors today, but user reviews have confirmed Master’s OCR is highly efficient in converting images of texts into solid, editable texts.
- Another unique feature of Master PDF Editor is its installation as a virtual PDF printer. This feature allows you to easily print any given word, excel, or PowerPoint document. Moreover, it also allows for easy conversion of all files into PDF format.
Bottom line
Like the usual PDF editors, this software also comprises digital signatures, bookmarking features, and easy annotation. Moreover, merging of more than one PDF document, and creating interactive PDF forms is easier than ever.
PDF Studio
As Adobe decided to discontinue its updates after Acrobat XI, PDF Studio was designed to be a suitable and stable alternative to the former. But the best part is, the fully licensed version of PDF Studio comes at a much lower price than what’s expected from you to dish out for Acrobat. And with a mere space of 300 MB, it’s soon going to replace the versatility of Acrobat Reader completely in the coming years. What makes it one of the best PDF editors for Mac is it does all of this without any bloatware.
Some of the unique features of PDF Studio includes:
- As mentioned above, the full version of this software is extremely light and, therefore, runs even on the lowest configuration devices.
- You can create all the extra elements such as watermarks, headers, footers, digital signatures, with easy to use buttons.
- One of the best features of this software is its security features. You can password protect your documents and share them with selected people of your choice. This is vehemently required in today’s research world.
Bottom line
This software is absolutely in line with the other highly sophisticated PDF editors out there. For instance, it has OCR text recognition, form designer, optimizing PDFs, and conversion of texts into images and vice-versa without any loss in quality.
Able2Extract Pro
We would like to end this list with a blast. This is why we selected this cross-platform PDF reader and editor known as Able2Extract Pro. In our opinion, this is one of the best PDF editors for Mac, and more so for professional purposes, due to multiple reasons. But the primary reason is this: it is a master of conversion. What it means, in essence, is the software can easily handle not just word, excel, and PowerPoint documents, but a lot of photo-editing and production software. Armed with an endless series of useful tools, you will be amazed at the exciting features it has.
Check out the features now:
- It supports all kinds of image formats, even RAW files directly from the camera. With Able2Extract Pro, you can directly convert high-quality (RAW) images directly into PDFs. Also, you can send them across without any loss in visual detail.
- Able2Extract Pro also supports Photoshop (PSD) and Autocad files.
- It comes with a vast range of options for formatting texts. For example, numberings and bullets, date/time addition, digital signature, prefixes, and suffixes.
Bottom line
Able2Extract Pro does not disappoint you because it comprises all the essential features which you would see in the top-class PDF editors. And owing to its cross-platform functionality, workflow gets visibly smoother. Finally, its ease of use and intuitive design makes the software all the more famous among not-so-tech-savvy people as well.
Conclusion
So, there you have it: the best PDF editor for Mac. Now you can stop worrying over all those work and schedule delays. Because all these editors are immensely versatile to serve all your needs. Research work will definitely get a lot smoother, and sharing (partial or full) documents haven’t been easier. Moreover, with some of these readers having their own cloud services, you can forget the pain of backups and restore. Good luck, and stay tuned for more such awesome reviews!
