Editing PDF (section)

== Software ==
{{Main list|List of PDF software}}

=== Viewers and editors ===

Many PDF viewers are provided free of charge from a variety of sources. Programs to manipulate and edit PDF files are available, usually for purchase.

There are many software options for creating PDFs, including the PDF printing capabilities built into [[macOS]], [[iOS]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ijunkie.com/how-to-create-pdf-web-page-safari-iphone-ipad-ios-11/|title=How to Create a PDF from Web Page on iPhone and iPad in iOS 11|last=Pathak|first=Khamosh|date=October 7, 2017|website=iJunkie|access-date=January 12, 2023|archive-date=January 12, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230112153246/https://ijunkie.com/how-to-create-pdf-web-page-safari-iphone-ipad-ios-11/|url-status=live}}</ref> and most [[Linux]] distributions. Much document processing software including [[LibreOffice]], [[Microsoft Office 2007]] (if updated to [[Office 2007#Service Pack 2|SP2]]) and later,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195|title=Description of 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)|publisher=[[Microsoft]]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090429212434/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195|archive-date=April 29, 2009|access-date=January 12, 2023}}</ref> [[WordPerfect]] 9, and [[Scribus]] can export documents in PDF. There are many PDF print drivers for Microsoft Windows, the [[pdfTeX]] typesetting system, the [[DocBook]] PDF tools, applications developed around [[Ghostscript]] and [[Adobe Acrobat]] itself as well as [[Adobe InDesign]], [[Adobe FrameMaker]], Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, that allow a "PDF printer" to be set up, which when selected sends output to a PDF file instead of a physical printer. [[Google]]'s online office suite [[Google Docs]] allows uploading and saving to PDF. Some web apps offer free PDF editing and annotation tools.

The [[Free Software Foundation]] was "developing a free, high-quality and fully functional set of libraries and programs that implement the PDF file format and associated technologies to the ISO 32000 standard", as one of its [[High priority free software projects|high priority projects]].<ref>On 2014-04-02, a note dated February 10, 2009 referred to [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html Current FSF High Priority Free Software Projects] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070810230457/http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html |date=August 10, 2007 }} as a source. Content of the latter page, however, changes over time.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://gnupdf.org/Goals_and_Motivations|title=Goals and Motivations|publisher=GNUpdf|date=November 28, 2007|website=gnupdf.org|access-date=April 2, 2014|archive-date=July 4, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140704114405/http://www.gnupdf.org/Goals_and_Motivations|url-status=usurped}}</ref> In 2011, however, the GNU PDF project was removed from the list of "high priority projects" due to the maturation of the [[Poppler (software)|Poppler library]],<ref>{{cite web|title=GNU PDF project leaves FSF High Priority Projects list; mission complete!|url=http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-pdf-project-leaves-high-priority-projects-list-mission-complete|date=October 6, 2011|first=Matt|last=Lee|publisher=Free Software Foundation|website=fsf.org|archive-date=December 28, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141228050435/http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-pdf-project-leaves-high-priority-projects-list-mission-complete|url-status=live}}</ref> which has enjoyed wider use in applications such as [[Evince]] with the [[GNOME]] desktop environment. Poppler is based on [[Xpdf]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://poppler.freedesktop.org/|title=Poppler Homepage|quote=Poppler is a PDF rendering library based on the xpdf-3.0 code base.|access-date=January 12, 2023|archive-date=January 8, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150108235708/http://poppler.freedesktop.org/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://cgit.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/tree/README-XPDF|title=Xpdf License|quote=Xpdf is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2 or 3.|access-date=January 12, 2023|archive-date=April 14, 2013|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130414194348/http://cgit.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/tree/README-XPDF|url-status=live}}</ref> code base. There are also commercial development libraries available as listed in [[List of PDF software]].

The [[Apache PDFBox]] project of the [[Apache Software Foundation]] is an open source Java library, licensed under the [[Apache License]], for working with PDF documents.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://pdfbox.apache.org/|url-status=live|title=The Apache PDFBox project- Apache PDFBox 3.0.0 released|date=August 17, 2023|archive-date=January 7, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230107234923/https://pdfbox.apache.org/}} Updated for new releases.</ref>

=== Printing ===

[[Raster image processor]]s (RIPs) are used to convert PDF files into a [[raster graphics|raster format]] suitable for imaging onto paper and other media in printers, digital production presses and [[prepress]] in a process known as [[rasterization]]. RIPs capable of processing PDF directly include the Adobe PDF Print Engine<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.adobe.com/products/pdfprintengine/overview.html|title=Adobe PDF Print Engine|publisher=Adobe Systems Inc.|access-date=August 20, 2014|archive-date=August 22, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130822034446/http://www.adobe.com/products/pdfprintengine/overview.html|url-status=live}}</ref> from Adobe Systems and Jaws<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.globalgraphics.com/products/jaws_rip/|title=Jaws® 3.0 PDF and PostScript RIP SDK|work=globalgraphics.com|access-date=November 26, 2010|archive-date=March 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305090728/http://globalgraphics.com/products/jaws_rip|url-status=dead}}</ref> and the Harlequin RIP from [[Global Graphics]].

In 1993, the Jaws raster image processor from Global Graphics became the first shipping prepress RIP that interpreted PDF natively without conversion to another format. The company released an upgrade to its Harlequin RIP with the same capability in 1997.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.globalgraphics.com/products/harlequin-multi-rip |title=Harlequin MultiRIP|access-date=March 2, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140209215413/http://www.globalgraphics.com/products/harlequin-multi-rip/|archive-date=February 9, 2014 }}</ref>

[[Agfa-Gevaert]] introduced and shipped Apogee, the first prepress workflow system based on PDF, in 1997.

Many commercial offset printers have accepted the submission of press-ready PDF files as a print source, specifically the PDF/X-1a subset and variations of the same.<ref>{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090205151505/http://www.prepressx.com/|archive-date=February 5, 2009|url=http://www.prepressx.com/|url-status=usurped|title=Press-Ready PDF Files|quote=For anyone interested in having their graphic project commercially printed directly from digital files or PDFs.|access-date=January 12, 2023}}</ref> The submission of press-ready PDF files is a replacement for the problematic need for receiving collected native working files.

In 2006, PDF was widely accepted as the standard print job format at the [[Open Source Development Labs]] Printing Summit. It is supported as a print job format by the [[CUPS|Common Unix Printing System]] and desktop application projects such as GNOME, [[KDE]], [[Firefox]], [[Mozilla Thunderbird|Thunderbird]], LibreOffice and [[OpenOffice.org|OpenOffice]] have switched to emit print jobs in PDF.<ref>{{cite web |title = PDF as Standard Print Job Format |date=October 23, 2009|url = http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/pdf_as_standard_print_job_format |website=The Linux Foundation |publisher=[[Linux Foundation]] |access-date=January 12, 2023|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091114130224/https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/pdf_as_standard_print_job_format|archive-date=November 14, 2009}}</ref>

Some desktop printers also support direct PDF printing, which can interpret PDF data without external help.

=== Native display model ===
{{unreferenced section|date=November 2023}}
PDF was selected as the "native" [[metafile]] format for [[macOS]] (originally called Mac OS X), replacing the [[PICT]] format of the earlier [[classic Mac OS]]. The imaging model of the [[Quartz (graphics layer)|Quartz]] graphics layer is based on the model common to [[Display PostScript]] and PDF, leading to the nickname ''Display PDF''. The [[Preview (macOS)|Preview]] application can display PDF files, as can version 2.0 and later of the [[Safari (web browser)|Safari]] web browser. System-level support for PDF allows macOS applications to create PDF documents automatically, provided they support the OS-standard printing architecture. The files are then exported in PDF 1.3 format according to the file header. When taking a screenshot under Mac OS X versions 10.0 through 10.3, the image was also captured as a PDF; later versions save screen captures as a PNG file, though this behavior can be set back to PDF if desired.

=== Annotation ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=November 2023}}
{{See also|Comparison of note-taking software}}

Adobe Acrobat is one example of proprietary software that allows the user to annotate, highlight, and add notes to already created PDF files. One UNIX application available as [[free software]] (under the [[GNU General Public License]]) is [[PDFedit]]. The freeware [[Foxit Reader]], available for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux, allows annotating documents. Tracker Software's [[PDF-XChange Viewer]] allows annotations and markups without restrictions in its [[freeware]] alternative. [[Apple Inc.|Apple]]'s macOS's integrated PDF viewer, Preview, does also enable annotations as does the open-source software [[Skim (software)|Skim]], with the latter supporting interaction with [[LaTeX]], SyncTeX, and PDFSync and integration with [[BibDesk]] reference management software. Freeware [[Qiqqa]] can create an annotation report that summarizes all the annotations and notes one has made across their library of PDFs. The Text Verification Tool exports differences in documents as annotations and markups.

There are also [[web annotation]] systems that support annotation in pdf and other document formats. In cases where PDFs are expected to have all of the functionality of paper documents, ink annotation is required.

=== Conversion and Information Extraction ===
PDF's emphasis on preserving the visual appearance of documents across different software and hardware platforms poses challenges to the conversion of PDF documents to other [[file format]]s and the targeted [[Information extraction|extraction of information]], such as text, images, tables, [[Bibliography|bibliographic information]], and document [[metadata]]. Numerous tools and source code libraries support these tasks. Several labeled [[dataset]]s to test PDF conversion and information extraction tools exist and have been used for benchmark evaluations of the tool's performance.<ref>{{Citation |last=Meuschke |first=Norman |title=A Benchmark of PDF Information Extraction Tools Using a Multi-task and Multi-domain Evaluation Framework for Academic Documents |date=2023 |work=Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity |volume=13972 |pages=383–405 |editor-last=Sserwanga |editor-first=Isaac |url=https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_31 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_31 |isbn=978-3-031-28031-3 |last2=Jagdale |first2=Apurva |last3=Spinde |first3=Timo |last4=Mitrović |first4=Jelena |last5=Gipp |first5=Bela |editor2-last=Goulding |editor2-first=Anne |editor3-last=Moulaison-Sandy |editor3-first=Heather |editor4-last=Du |editor4-first=Jia Tina|arxiv=2303.09957 }}</ref>