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The arrival of multiple fonts on the computer platform certainly helped kick-start the production of eye-catching documents for general distribution as electronic media. However this boom to productivity also resulted in problems when the recipient of such items found they did not have access to the fonts, whether plain or decorative, used in the document. It did not take long before solutions began to appear with Adobe and WordPerfect leading the way. As we all know, it was the Adobe solution that became the de facto standard with its PDF (Portable Document Format) technology.

While Adobe has placed its PDF Reader software in the public domain so it is freely available to everyone, the company does charge for its Acrobat software that is used for the creation and editing of PDF files. There is no doubt that Acrobat, now in its latest Professional 3.0 version, is an excellent product, it can prove to be an expensive purchase for the occasional user or those on a limited budget. Offering a more economic solution, if with a slightly reduced feature set, is ScanSoft’s PDF Converter Professional product. In its version 3 incarnation, this product contains the ability to view, save, create, convert and edit PDF using a single application.

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As with its other titles, ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional 3.0 requires the user to instigate an activation procedure. This procedure needs to be carried out via an Internet connection. You will only be allowed to use the program for a maximum of five times without activation. Not only will you be reminder to carry out the activation process each time you load the program and at regular intervals thereafter but any files created with bear a Trial Version watermark as an added incentive, if one should be necessary, to activate the product.

PDF Converter Professional 3.0 allows you to create a PDF document from scratch or work with a single or multiple files that already exist. An Assistant can be used to help ease your way through the creation process as you target selected files and decide whether these should be handled as separate files, combined or overlaid. Options are available to define the page size, orientation, resolution plus set the compression rate and add password protection. The actual conversion process is generally quick and the results can be viewed by using the built-in viewer or in Adobe’s Reader application.

Links, in the form of icons, are provided for converting files direct from a number of applications including Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and Corel WordPerfect. The program allows you to take a PDF file and convert it into a Word, WordPerfect or rich text format for any editing purposes. You can also edit a PDF file directly and add bookmarks; insert items such as links and notes; highlight text; and personalise documents with an appropriate stamp.

PDF Converter includes a new FormTyper module that makes use of Logical Form Recognition technology. As its name implies, this module allows you to work with PDF forms that you might encounter when online. You can even create your own forms that can include buttons, check boxes, combo boxes, text fields and signatures.

PDF Converter Professional 3 might lack some of the more specialised features of the Adobe product but it can cope quite well with most eventualities when working with PDF files. It can create, convert and edit these types of documents whether working directly with them or through a range of third-party applications. While PDF Converter Professional 3 is unlikely to topple Adobe Acrobat from its market leading position, it does make an attractive substitute at an economic price point of around £60.

http://www.scansoft.co.uk/pdfconverter/