(Newswire.net — June 24, 2020) — As technology continues to transform the ways in which we receive and engage with information, a growing number of people are embracing ‘paperless’ reading. Be it a novel or a workplace document, people are beginning to favor the simple and portable form of electronic reading. PDF files are increasingly commonplace across industries, and are now rightly recognised as an important medium. The fixed format enables files to be displayed in the same form, irrespective of the system platform.
But the “fixed” nature of the PDF format can also be seen as its one major disadvantage; its immutability makes it difficult for users to modify the file. To address this problem, the ‘PDF editor’ tool came into being. There are several PDF editors in the market, each one characterised by a distinct function and focus. The efficiency of a PDF editor is determined by certain basic criteria:
1. It must provide a smooth reading experience: no outdated UI, no loading issues, and it shouldn’t have a problem opening PDFs with hundreds of pages.
2. It must enable the user to edit and mark PDF files anytime and anywhere.
3. They should facilitate easy conversion to common formats and convenient file transfers.
This article will focus on developing a detailed comparative analysis of PDFelement and PDF Expert, two widely-used PDF applications.
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Product analysis
- Product Positioning
PDFelement: A versatile and professional PDF solution that enables powerful text editing. Its form data processing technology allows users to quickly modify, convert, share and organize PDF files. PDFelement is an excellent PDF solution that covers a spectrum of functions, and is suitable for casual users as well as professionals and enterprise users.
PDF Expert: A fast, lightweight, and easy-to-use PDF editor. It is characterised by high speed, powerful file sharing, and can be used to edit files anytime and anywhere. It is suitable for regular and casual PDF users.
- System Requirements
Space occupied:
PDFelement Standard Edition: 27.8M
PDFelement Professional Edition (including OCR): 486M
PDF Expert: 34M
- Product Value
PDFelement: Designed in cool blue and white, it reflects a simple and elegant business style, which is in line with the mainstream design of productivity tools.
PDF Expert: The main color of the product is black and gray; a simple and classic design.
- Product Release Date
At first, PDF Expert only had an iOS app. It was released for Mac desktops in November 2013, and it was well-received by users and editors with Apple devices.
Wondershare (Wanxing Technology), the developer of PDFelement, is highly experienced in the PDF field, and has previously released several PDF products (such as some products in the figure below:)
Wondershare Technology officially released a comprehensive PDF application – PDFelement – in 2015. Before, the market focus was overseas, but this year the company began to focus on the Chinese market.
The two products have been compared and analyzed to see how their respective functions are used in real-life situations.
Core Function Comparison
- Read
PDFelement: Smooth reading and personalized page management
PDFelement reads smoothly, has a high resolution, and runs fast. Faced with hundreds of pages of PDF documents, readers can quickly jump to the page they want to read. As for page management, you can rotate, swap, and delete pages, or extract important pages individually to generate a new PDF file.
PDF Expert: Browse like an expert, runs smoothly
Whether it is a paper resource nesting many formula tables or an entire book running into hundreds of MB, PDF Expert can quickly open your PDF without a problem. It has a highlight function called “split view”, where users can read two documents at the same time. When you need to compare different documents or do a Chinese-English comparison, for example, this split-screen reading function will definitely delight you.
Summary: Both applications are very good at reading. If you are forced to choose one, PDF Expert may be slightly better. The operation has achieved the “three fasts”: fast opening speed, fast scrolling speed, and fast zooming speed. The most important thing is that its split view function is really easy to use, eliminating the time for switching back and forth between two documents, thereby greatly improving your efficiency.
- Edit callouts
PDFelement: Powerful tools and precise editing
PDFelement performs very well in terms of editing and annotations. It provides a lot of annotation tools, including highlighting, underlining, deleting, boxes, notes, etc., which can definitely meet the needs of ‘markup junkies.’ At the same time, the application’s operation is sensitive; so, no matter how you drag and move, you don’t have to worry about drawing elsewhere or making unintentional markups.
In addition to the annotation function, the editing function of PDFelement is also very powerful. If it is the text in a scanned document or a picture, you can also use the OCR (optical character recognition) plugin in the Professional version to identify each character, allowing you to modify the text in the document at any time. Therefore, when you want to modify the content, you don’t need to convert it to a Word document first. You can add, delete, and modify text directly using the PDF editor.
PDF Expert: Easy to use and meticulous
Many people initially chose the PDF editor for its annotation function, so you will find various annotation tools in PDF Expert. In addition, there is a signature function that is popular among business users. The app has rich native stamps but it is a pity that Chinese stamps have not yet been added.
Summary: In annotation editing, PDFelement provides more tools and more accurate identification. Rich annotation tools make notes more intuitive, and review documents more energetic. Using the editing function, we can modify the error information in the resume, contract, and plan book at any time, which is very convenient and efficient. One of the slogan that reminds of PDFelement is “Get a smarter, faster editing experience that is like Microsoft Word”. Edit PDFs as easily and quickly as you edit word documents. If you go to use this application, you will certainly find this experience.
- Format conversion
PDFelement: Multi-format conversion in one step
Although the PDF format is very common and convenient to use, it is not so mainstream compared to the Microsoft Office series. Many people need to convert PDF documents to other formats for their workflows. PDFelement supports multi-format file conversion. You can convert files into various common or uncommon formats such as Word, Excel, PPT, pictures, HTML and so on.
PDF Expert: Absence of conversion functions, a big disappointment
Sorry, but I really can’t find a suitable image for this section. As I used PDF Expert, I pressed all the buttons I could see, and I still can’t find the function for format conversion. I don’t know if other users have the same experience as me when using this product.
Summary: The format conversion can be said to be a critical function of a PDF editor. However, this feature doesn’t seem to be available in PDF Expert, which is really puzzling. In terms of format conversion, PDFelement obviously wins.
The above is a comparison of the functions of PDFelement Standard version and PDF Expert. The form data extraction and OCR functions discussed next are the unique advantages of PDFelement Professional Edition. If you often need to deal with forms, PDFelement Professional could be the perfect product for you.
- Form processing
PDFelement: Data extraction, powerful OCR technology
It is not uncommon for the staff responsible for collecting and sorting out information to receive hundreds or thousands of application forms. If you want to manually input the information one by one, the workload is huge, and it is very easy to make mistakes. PDFelement’s batch extraction function can generate an excel sheet with one click, and all form information will be automatically summarized into the excel sheet, which is very efficient.
In addition, PDFelement is also equipped with powerful “OCR text recognition technology”, which means that, in addition to conventional PDF files, scanned PDF files can also be used for data extraction. In the case of an invoice number, for example, we can take a photo and scan it to a PDF file, then follow the same operation to extract the data. This function is especially suitable for small and medium-sized companies to perform batch operations, which is conducive to the improvement of enterprise efficiency.
PDF Expert: Can fill in regular forms without OCR technology
PDF Expert is quite satisfactory in terms of form processing, but only provides the most basic form filling and signature functions. The signature supports Trackpad use, and is more natural. However, there is no OCR technology in the application, and PDF Expert appears to be unable to cope with scanned forms.
Summary: If you usually just fill out forms, then PDF Expert and PDFelement can both meet your needs. However, PDFelement is more functional because you can create forms using selectable buttons, checklists, dropdown lists, and more. If you want to process table data, we recommend that you download the Professional version of PDFelement, which supports batch extraction of data, batch conversion, batch watermarking, and so on. The built-in OCR technology can also process scans, and generate summary tables with one click; and don’t worry about large and cumbersome forms because PDFelement can handle any heavy workload.
Summarizing the above, it might be more helpful to show the comparison of the two core functions in a table:
The prices of PDFelement Standard Edition and PDF Expert are the same, and the core functions are more focused towards format conversion and form creation; and, of course there are some additional features to consider. PDF Expert has a lot fewer functions but the product is mature and the experience will feel smoother and more stable. PDFelement has a lot more functions and the company regularly updates each version to improve on the previous one. In addition, it also provides professional versions for professionals or enterprise users, but the price is higher.
After seeing the comparing between the two, which one do you prefer?