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Take Control of PDFpen 5
Learn to create, edit, and manipulate PDFs with Smile's PDFpen 5!
Have you ever had to fill out and sign a PDF-based form? Or change the date on a PDF-based flyer? Comment on a document sent around your workplace as a PDF file? Scan a document to PDF and OCR the text? Smile’s PDFpen 5 can perform these and many other PDF manipulations more easily than Adobe Acrobat, and at a fraction of the price. With clarity and humor, Take Control of PDFpen 5 explains precisely what you can do with PDFs using PDFpen and its big brother, PDFpenPro.
What about PDFpen 6? If you're running PDFpen 6, read Take Control of PDFpen 6 instead. In addition to explaining how to use PDFpen 6 on the Mac, this ebook also discusses which version of PDFpen 6 to buy and looks at using PDFpen on an iOS device.
- More Info
- Contents & Intro
- FAQ
- Blog
After a whirlwind history and overview of PDF, you'll take a tour through PDFpen’s tools and navigation. With those basics taken care of, you’ll learn how to:
- Scan a document to PDF and make the text editable with OCR.
- Combine pages from multiple files into a single PDF.
- Turn a Web site into a multi-page PDF.
- Add or remove pages from a PDF.
- Add a handwritten signature to a PDF.
- Add page and URL links to a PDF.
- Make a clickable table of contents for a PDF.
- Use professional editing marks on a PDF.
- Edit text within a PDF that was received in email.
- Leave comments on a PDF document.
- Remove sensitive or confidential text from a PDF.
- Enhance the images in a PDF.
- Fill out a PDF-based form.
- Print just form entries on a pre-printed form.
- Create an interactive PDF-based form that can collect data and send it to you via email or the Web.
An appendix describes the many useful AppleScripts that ship with PDFpen.
If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free trial version of PDFpen or of PDFpen Pro. The fully functional trial versions put a Smile watermark on your documents. (Also, you can download a free sample version of this ebook!)
Book Info
iPad & KindleAn EPUB is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info... A Mobipocket file is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info... |
About the Author
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Book Reviews
Author Interviews
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Michael E. Cohen has taught English composition, worked as a programmer for NASA’s Deep Space Network, helped develop the first commercial ebooks at the Voyager Company, co-founded a major university’s Humanities computing center, taught a number of people, and played with a lot of new technology. He's the author of a number of books, including Take Control of PDFpen 6, Take Control of iBooks Author, and Take Control of TextExpander.
Table of Contents
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Read Me FirstThis book tells you how create, edit, and enhance PDF documents with PDFpen and PDFpenPro from Smile. It was written by Michael E. Cohen, edited by Adam Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc. |
Introduction
Although I don’t remember the exact date, I do recall the first time I ever saw a PDF. I was working at the Voyager Company, a cutting-edge multimedia company housed in a condemned four-story building on the beach a half mile north of the Santa Monica pier.
In those days we were busy putting out a number of Expanded Books—books on floppy disk, presented in HyperCard—which were possibly the first commercially successful ebooks. Representatives from Adobe had come to Santa Monica to discuss some new technology with us, something that they called “Carousel,” to see if we would be interested in using it for a next-generation Expanded Book product line.
We sat in the shabby common room of the Voyager suite as staff, children, and dogs wandered in and out, while the Adobe folk pitched us their new creation.
Two things stood out for me: the text in the PDF looked really good, much better than the text in the screen-rendered bitmap fonts that we used for our Expanded Books, but the PDF files were, when compared to the typical HyperCard stacks we distributed, enormous. No way could one of those fit on a floppy! What’s more, there were no inexpensive tools for creating and customizing PDFs, and there was no standard Mac application that could display PDFs at the time (HyperCard shipped with every Mac back then).
So we took a pass, with a polite thank you for your interest, we’ll talk with you again sometime, enjoy your visit to the beach.
Today, Voyager is history, the building demolished, HyperCard a distant memory, and PDFs are ubiquitous. Ebooks may have started in HyperCard, but they are now in many other formats, including PDF. Such as the one you most likely are reading right now.
And now there are inexpensive powerful tools for customizing PDFs. Such as the ones that this book is about: PDFpen and PDFpenPro.
We could have really used these programs back on the beach in Santa Monica. I blame it all on floppy disks.
About PDFpen 5 and PDFpenPro 5
Smile bills these two applications as “PDF editing software for Mac OS X.” That’s true enough, as far as it goes, although it’s rather like calling a 17-tool Swiss Army knife a mere pocketknife.
As you’ll see as you read through this book, with PDFpen you can edit PDFs, create PDFs, combine PDFs, split PDFs apart, perform OCR on PDFs, manipulate images in PDFs, and much, much more.
This book covers version 5 of both PDFpen and PDFpenPro, the latter of which has some advanced features beyond the already copious set that PDFpen offers. In this book, everything I say about PDFpen also applies to PDFpenPro; when I do deal with features that are exclusive to PDFpenPro, however, I make that clear.
Finally, if you are a user of PDFpen and discover that the PDFpenPro features are what you need, choose PDFpen > Upgrade to PDFpenPro and you’ll have the upgraded software in a matter of moments.
PDFpen Quick Start
Use this Quick Start to get to the information you need about how edit PDF documents with PDFpen and PDFpenPro.
Get familiar with PDFs and PDFpen:
- Start off with some essential background in Learn about PDF Files, where you’ll learn about the objects that PDF files can contain and the all-important concept of imprints.
- Become familiar with the tools you have and when to use them in Understand the Tools, and then learn the different ways you can get around in a PDF document in Navigate a PDF Document.
Make and modify PDFs:
- To use PDFpen, you need to have a PDF to work on; see how to Make PDFs from Scratch , to Print to PDF, to Import from Scans and Graphic Files, to Make PDFs from HTML, and to Combine Existing PDFs.
- Many changes you make to a PDF take place within the confines of a single page: learn how to Add, Edit, and Remove Text and Add and Alter Pictures.
- Make large-scale changes when you Search and Replace or Redact Text, or when you Rearrange, Rotate, and Crop Pages.
- A PDF is not necessarily a read-only document when you Make an Interactive PDF Form with PDFpenPro.
- Use The Scripts for batch processing power.
Review and distribute PDFs:
- Communicate with co-authors and colleagues when you Take Notes on a PDF and Copyedit and Review a PDF.
- Finally, understand your saving and printing options in Publish Your PDFs.
Does this ebook cover previous version of PDFpen?
Although the book covers PDFpen 5, many of the program's features work as they did in previous versions. Of course, if you use PDFpen regularly, upgrading to PDFpen 5 is probably worthwhile. If not, though, you may still find this book useful; while some PDFpen defaults have changed from earlier versions of the software, and while the information in the book about PDFpen 5's new features will not be relevant to users of previous versions, much of the material—perhaps 70%— is still applicable.
What are the minimum system requirements for PDFpen 5
Both PDFpen 5 and PDFpenPro 5 require Mac OS X version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later.
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle?
There are lots of great ways to read our ebooks on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this title!
Send Us Your Comments!
How could we not publish such kind words? If you'd like to send us your comments (good or bad, though we hope they're all good), just click the Feedback link on the cover of your copy of the ebook. Be sure to let us know if we can publish your comment. Thanks!
Update Plans
May 15, 2013 -- We do not plan to update this particular ebook to further describe PDFpen 5. However, Take Control of PDFpen 6 is available.
—Tonya Engst
Version 6 Now Available
March 21, 2013 --
The fine folks at Smile have released PDFpen version 6, and PDFpen Pro version 6. Key new features include PDF-to-Word conversion, support for Apple's Mac OS X Auto Save and Versions features, and more flexibility for viewing and printing annotations. The new version 6 runs under 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion.
Michael is working updating this ebook to cover PDFpen 6, but in the meanwhile you can learn more about PDFpen 6 at the Smile Web site or in the TidBITS article, PDFpen 6.0 Adds Word Export.
—Tonya Engst
PDFpen and PDFpenPro 5.7 Updates Add iCloud Support; PDFpen for iPad App Completes the Trifecta
February 8, 2012 --
Direct iCloud access for PDFpen and PDFpenPro and a new iPad app: Smile has been busy of late.
—Michael E. Cohen
PDFpen 5.5 Adds Page Numbering Features and More
August 30, 2011 --
Smile has just released version 5.5 of PDFpen and of PDFpen Pro, which is available as a free upgrade to registered owners of PDFpen 5 and PDFpen Pro 5. This latest release adds an Insert Page Numbers item to the Edit menu, with various options for placement, alignment, number form (such as numerals, letters, or Roman), and starting page number. It also provides expanded options for Bates numbering (a special format used for legal and business documents, described on pg. 126 of "Take Control of PDFpen 5"), including prefixes and the number of digits to be used. In addition to page numbering enhancements, the update includes support for full-screen mode in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
—Michael E. Cohen
Do you know of any software that is like PDFpen, but for Windows?
October 1, 2010 --
I asked Jean MacDonald at Smile for help with this question. She replied, saying, "One that I know of is Nitro PDF. They have Evernote integration like PDFpen, which is how we got to know them."
—Tonya Engst
Two Podcast Episodes about the PDF Format, PDFpen, and Smile
September 24, 2010 --
Tune into a pair of episodes from the MacVoices podcast to learn a whole lot more about PDFpen, which was recently released in Version 5, as well the PDF format generally, and Smile generally.
In MacVoices #10109, Michael Cohen, author of Take Control of PDFpen 5 , chats with MacVoices host Chuck Joiner about how he approached writing the ebook, and why the ebook begins with a conceptual and historical look at the PDF format, and the implicit assumptions and goals of the PDF format. The discussion then turns to various foibles of editing PDFs and features of PDFpen. Also, find out which Mac application Michael describes as an "atomic fly swatter."
In MacVoices #954, recorded in 2009, the three Smile principals join host Chuck Joiner to talk about the history, philosophy, and product line of the company. (Smile was formerly named SmileOnMyMac, but its name was changed in 2010 because they now also develop for iOS.)
—Tonya Engst
“Take Control of PDFpen 5” Teaches You to Tweak PDFs Like a Pro
September 23, 2010 --
Have you ever had to fill out and sign a PDF-based form? Or change the date on a PDF-based flyer? Make comments on a document sent around your workplace as a PDF file? Scan a document to PDF and OCR the text? For those tasks, I generally turn to Smile’s PDFpen, which can perform many PDF manipulations more easily than Adobe Acrobat, and at a fraction of the price. That’s why we’re happy to bring you Take Control of PDFpen 5 to demystify the many sorts of PDF manipulation you can accomplish using PDFpen. Written by Michael E. Cohen, whose electronic publishing credentials predate even PDF (he helped create Voyager’s Expanded Books in the early 1990s), the 132-page ebook explains precisely what you can do with PDFs using PDFpen and its big brother, PDFpenPro. The book costs $10.
After a whirlwind history and overview of the PDF format, Michael walks you through PDFpen’s tools and navigation. With those basics taken care of, you’ll then learn how to:
- Scan a document to PDF and make the text editable with OCR
- Combine pages from multiple files into a single PDF
- Turn a Web site into a multi-page PDF
- Add or remove pages from a PDF
- Add a handwritten signature to a PDF
- Add page and Web links to a PDF
- Make a clickable table of contents for a PDF
- Mark up a PDF with professional editing marks
- Edit text within a PDF that you received in email
- Leave comments on a PDF document
- Remove sensitive or confidential text from a PDF
- Enhance the images in a PDF
- Fill out a PDF-based form
- Print just form entries on a pre-printed form
- Create an interactive PDF-based form that can collect data and send it to you via email or the Web
An appendix describes the many useful AppleScripts that ship with PDFpen.
This ebook was created in collaboration with Smile, with Michael providing feedback during the PDFpen 5 development process and PDFpen's developers tech editing the book for complete accuracy.
—Adam Engst
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