PDF Editors

PDF was originally designed as some kind of “electronic paper”, which means a PDF was not meant to be editable. But the more ubiquitous the PDF format became, the more use cases appeared, in which it made sense to edit “non-editable” files, e.g., last-minute corrections of spelling errors or the re-ordering of pages in a print workflow. The inventor of PDF, Adobe, took the lead and devoloped Acrobat, which is still the leading PDF editing program. However, since the PDF specification is open, others started to tinker as well, and today there are countless tools, closed source or open, that allow for editing PDF files. Below is a list of recommended FLOSS programs for PDF editing.

• PDF Toolkit is a Java-based utility with countless options to edit PDFs. There are three versions available: Free, Pro and Server.
• jPDF Tweak, a Java program, has rightfully been called a Swiss army knife for PDFs. It uses the highly reliable iText library for PDF editing. Standalone versions are only available for Linux and Windows.



• PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge) is an even more powerful tool than jPDF Tweak and has a proven track record in pre-press environments. Like jPDF Tweak, PDFsam is a Java program, but in contrast to all other Java programs in this list, the language of the graphical user interface can be changed, and there are many translations available. It is available for Linux, macOS and Windows. PDFsam is available in two versions: Basic (gratis) and Premium (paid).

• Another interesting Open Source project is PDF4QT. It currently comprises 4 modules, namely a lightweight PDF viewer, an advanced PDF viewer akin to Acrobat Reader, but with a more user-friendly interface, a tool called DocDiff, which allows you to compare different versions of PDF documents, as well as DocPage Organizer, which provides many of the features of PDFsam, even though it's not as intuitive.
• Bookbinder is a PDF editor for beginners and simple tasks. Its main purpose is to re-order (and re-scale, if necessary) pages in a PDF file for booklet printing and similar tasks. Bookbinder is written in Java and requires a working Java environment on your computer. It hasn't been updated since 2010, so you may encounter some difficulties.
• PDF Arranger is a simple, but very useful tool that does exactly what its name says (and much more), namely visually re-arrange pages in a PDF document. The minimalistic interface hides the powerful features of the program, which will only be revealed once you use the right mouse button.

• PDF24 is a gratis program that provides a boatload of useful features for PDF editing and creation. It's gratis even for commercial use, except for its fax (!) features. It has been translated into many languages, but an offline version is only available for Windows. Fortunately, you can also use an online version, which is financed by ads.

If you want to edit a PDF that comprises artwork, you can use GIMP, Krita, Inkscape or Libre Office Draw, depending on the content, as all of them can import PDFs and will let you edit the files. And of course you can use Scribus itself!

An area where Acrobat, including third-party plug-ins, still shines, is preflight, i.e., conformity with standards pertaining to printing. However, you can import a PDF into Scribus and the re-export it using a PDF profile (PDF 1.3 to 1.6, PDF/X-1a:2001 to PDF/X-4). The Preflight Verifier, if properly configurated, will display every conformity problem with your file, so you can fix it. Whilst not a full replacement for Acrobat, Scribus's PDF export is extremely reliable, and you should expect a solid result.