Here’s a list of services and products that create documents in Adobe’s “Portable Document Format” (PDF). (Much of this is drawn from Merle’s article on WebProNews)
Software that creates PDF files from other files
- PDFMoto: A Web publishing system that converts documents you create in any Windows application into PDF. They offer several different versions, so pricing varies, but they do offer a free version that is limited to 50 documents.
- PDF995 : Free software that allows you to create PDF documents as easily as hitting the “print” key from within any application. The free version has an advertising splash page that comes up everytime you run the program but you can purchase “keys” for $9.95 each to remove them if they bother you.
- Txt2PDF: a Perl 5 program that converts your old text docs to PDF format. Runs on any platform that supports Perl. From $40.
- Gymnast: freeware text to PDF creator for Windows.
- CutePDF Printer: totally free. This software has no annoying ads or banners. Choose print from within any application to create a PDF instantly.
- Win2PDF: Windows NT, Win 2000 or XP. From $35 to $70.
- PDFCreator: an open-source project on SourceForge.net, installing as a printer driver. (Thanks cmswire for this one, and pointing to the original story.)
- pdfFactory: quite advanced PDF creator, including multiple documents into one PDF, preview and font embedding.
Suites that include PDF conversion
The following office suites include PDF printing as part of the standard package:
Other products, such as PaperPort ($100 to $200) and PaperMaster Pro ($200) will allow you to scan or convert a file to PDF as part of the program’s overall document management system.
Online Services
- Adobe Look in the left hand column for the button that says “create PDF online.” You can create up to five documents free; after that you’ll need to pay $10 a month or $100 per year for unlimited usage.
GoBlc Free online conversion service that will email you the results.
Software to convert PDF files
Software that turns an Acrobat file into something you can edit in another program:
- PDFConverter: converts PDF to Microsoft Word (this won’t work with scanned image PDF files) ($50)
- OmniPage: converts any kind of PDF file into an Office document; will also scan or convert an existing document into PDF ($600).
Thanks for this list! I’ve been using Adobe’s online PDF creation tool, and it’s great to finally have a program I can use even if I’m offline.
Don’t forget Ghostview – an alternative to Acrobat Reader. Even if Acrobat files are protected, GSView will often allow you to extract the text http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/
Also if I recall correctly Mac OSX automatically allows any programs to produce PDFs as part of the operating system.
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A good compliment to GSView is Ghost Word. Ghost Word can be found at http://www.et.dtu.dk/Software/GhostWord/Index.html
The PDF format is today the universal standard to share and broadcast electronic documents. Easy Pdf Converter helps you to convert in a few seconds your documents (maps, proposals, reports, notes…) into light and protected PDF files.
http://www.pdf-to-html-word.com/easy-pdf-converter-5.htm