People Sure Are Picky About PDF Tools

Few categories of software arouse as much debate as apps designed to work with PDFs, primarily because there are such a variety of use cases and work flows around these documents. As anyone who has ever worked in IT support can tell you, every ignorant enterprise user that has ever lived is convinced they need Adobe Acrobat Pro - to hell with its huge footprint, huge cost and hefty learning curve. Even knowledgable Mac users who are infrequent users of PDFS, remain in the dark about all the powerful features available in the native macOS Preview app:

• Annotate and mark-up Documents & Images: add highlights, underlines, shapes, text boxes, free-hand drawing, callouts, sticky notes. 
• Fill out PDF forms / add signatures: you can type into form fields (where detected) and insert an electronic signature via trackpad or camera. 
• Rearrange, delete, insert pages in PDFs: drag pages in the sidebar, drop in images or other PDFs, merge documents.
• Redact or permanently hide sensitive content in PDFs/images: Black-out (redact) areas so they cannot be recovered. 
• Export/convert file formats: e.g., change image formats, export PDFs with encryption/passwords, save in various file types.
• Built-in OCR/text selection on images (in supported cases): lets you hover/select text in an image and copy it. 
• Password protect & set permissions in PDFs when exporting: you can lock a document so it can’t be printed/copied/edited.

Users who have easily defendable specific needs for powerful PDF apps include those in academia, the legal profession and finance, where there are often laws concerning data retention for the massive amounts of data generated. And, of course there are lots of one off cases for different roles that can be incredibly specific. For many users, occasional PDF needs can be easily met by free online tools that do document conversion, signatures and advanced annotation:

• iLovePDF | Online PDF tools for PDF lovers
• Smallpdf.com - A Free Solution to all your PDF Problems
• Best PDF Editor | Edit, Sign, Merge & Secure

For my advanced needs, which are primarily the conversion of large PDFs into ePub and other formats along with adding OCR to PDFS that don't have it, I am partial to Abby Fine Reader, which is a hefty $70 a year. Currently, SwiftDoo PDF for Mac is on sale for $7.99, a considerable discount from the usual price of $98. At the discounted price, it's a decent bargain if your PDF needs fall in the these categories:

• Text/Image/Link editing – Unlike many simpler PDF viewers, you can edit text, change font/size/style, insert images, and embed hyperlinks. (Vendor version 2.0.0.3 added this explicitly.)
• Annotation tools – Highlights, underlines, strikethroughs, sticky notes, shapes, drawing freehand: useful when marking up documents rather than just reading.
• Page-/document-management – You can rotate, insert, delete pages, reorder, etc. Good for cleaning up multi-page PDFs. 
• Security features – Password protection, permission settings (view/copy/print/edit) are included in the Mac version.

When compared to the Windows version of the app, the Mac version comes up short, primarily because it lacks OCR conversion and batch conversions. It's also not optimized for Apple Silicon, meaning it requires Rosetta which will not be supported after the current version of macOS. You can spend more money and get more features from other PDF suites like PDF Expert ($140 one−time)and Foxit PDF Editor ($130 - year).