Expert's Rating
Pros
- Fast and lean
- Accurate output to PDF
Cons
- Lacks overall refinement
- Far less accurate in producing documents from PDFs
- Few advanced features
Our Verdict
It can run on almost any Windows system, and it will output run-of-the-mill PDFs without a hitch, but it lacks the tools for most advanced PDF tasks.
If you need to create or edit PDF files, want a slew of features, and are willing to spend some money, it will be worth your while to try out Foxit Phantom PDF Suite. This powerful piece of software has just about every feature you want in a PDF creator, and creates PDF–and lets you tweak them every which way–exceptionally quickly.
Creating a PDF from a file is exceptionally easy, because Foxit Phantom PDF Suite installs as a printer driver. Print your file as you would normally, but choose the Foxit Phantom PDF Suite driver, and it will create a PDF. Alternately, you can open the program itself, and convert files to PDF from there.
Foxit Phantom PDF Suite does its work exceptionally quickly. I converted a very complex, graphics-heavy and table-heavy 73-page Word document in less than two minutes. Less complex files convert in seconds.
There’s plenty more than just basic PDF creation here. You can also edit PDFs, and do things such as add forms and buttons, and even images and movies to them. You can create a PDF from a scanner, or combine multiple documents into a single PDF. And it’s a great PDF viewer as well. You won’t need to jump between apps to do all this–it’s all integrated in one product.
All this power doesn’t come cheap, at $129. But if you need a power tool for PDF creation and are willing to pay, this is the one to get.
Note: This link takes you to the vendor’s site, where you must register to download the software.
–Preston Gralla