Get started on editing PDF files on your Mac. Learn the basics of Mac PDF editing-from annotating to replacing texts-with this helpful guide.
PDF file is undoubtedly one of the most widely used file formats, you may need to edit a PDF business proposal or a application form. Many people, particularly semi-professionally, think they need Adobe Acrobat to edit PDF, but this is not true.
We don’t even need any 3rd-party software to edit a PDF on Mac, because we can do it with the built-in Preview app. And if you want something powerful than Preview, but cheaper than Acrobat, we have a tool geared exactly for this as well.
You may notice “Adobe Hate” anywhere online, though Adobe is the tech giant, nothing can stop users from looking for Adobe alternatives. Why more and more people not choosing Adobe Acrobat to edit PDF on Mac? You can find the possible reasons as follows:
Adobe Acrobat boasts itself in offering a lot of and advanced features to users, which also makes it more difficult to navigate and manipulate a document, you have to get familiar with its interface, workflow and try a lot of time to pick an appropriate tool or option for your PDF.
Though much better than Photoshop, Acrobat is still a resource-heavy program to drag your computer slow, especially when you have downloaded Adobe Creative Cloud that integrate all Adobe apps in one place. If you don’t have a fast and powerful computer, you need to be patient to run and use this tool, or just go crazy when it doesn’t initiate at all.
For Acrobat Pro that with all advanced features to edit a PDF file, its best value is $19.99/month, while $239.88/year, which is so expensive, no one is expecting such a high expense on a digital utility that can bring them to nowhere in the end.
If you don’t want Adobe Acrobat, then what is the best Mac PDF editor for users? Basing on our testing and users’ feedback over the Internet, Cisdem PDFMaster is the best!
For both beginners and advanced PDF users, they won’t have any issue using Cisdem PDFMaster. It is designed to be simple and user-friendly, users can find and use the one-click editing tools by navigating through each module on the main interface.
Without paying hundreds of dollars at one time, we can edit PDFs by using dozens of basic and advanced features in Cisdem PDFMaster. Its wide range of editing tools includes a PDF editor, PDF converter, PDF creator, OCR, annotation-taking tool, pages organizer, data encryption tool and so on. We can also edit any text and image in the file, without messing up its original formatting.
If you want to edit a PDF on Mac at an advanced level, such as, edit the original text in PDF, write on PDF files, add digital signature, redact or make PDF text searchable, you can use Cisdem PDFMaster, it makes PDF editing much easier and cheaper than any other programs. It has 14-day free trial of the premium features, helping you create and edit PDFs like a pro.
Here we will give you several tutorials to edit a PDF on Mac with PDFMaster. Also, you can refer to its user guide and edit your PDFs to its full potential.
If you need to black out some sensitive information on your PDF files you can use redact function.
PDFMaster is easy to use and has an intuitive interface, just choose the module and all the tools will be ready for you to use with ease.
Apple Preview is the built in macOS app that can edit PDF files for free. If you haven’t done PDF editing before or installed any 3rd party PDF editor on your Mac, Preview is a good place to get started before moving on to more advanced software.
According to above, Preview doesn’t let users edit existing texts in a PDF file, we can only erase original texts and add new texts. It offers basic editing tools only, lacking the advanced tools that you can find in other 3rd-party PDF editing software.
Here we’ll walk through each process of using Preview to edit a PDF in Mac Preview.
If you PDF is scanned or you have text in images. you can use the Live Text feature to take copy text from PDF files. Please hover the pointer over the text, then drag it to select it. Control-click your selection. and Choose “Copy”.
Except Preview and some paid offline software on Mac, there are still dozens of PDF programs that can solve your problems in editing and no cost to you. Perhaps in the past, we have not seen so many free and useful PDF online tools on the market. But now, many PDF software have begun providing free online services for everyone.
If you don’t need to edit a PDF on Mac that often, use a free PDF editor online. Here we pick PDFfiller, the PDF editor allowing you to add text, annotate, sign, comment, highlight, etc, you can print and share PDF files online.
If you want to edit a PDF on Mac as freely as possible, make it in editable Word or other formats first, then edit PDF in Word on Mac. Google Docs is a recommended PDF converter for Mac to turn PDF into editable Word. It is also one of the most popular collaboration tools that lets you edit the same PDF document with your colleagues in real-time.
In addition to limited PDF editing features, there is a severe problem of editing PDF on Mac with these free solutions-the formatting of the document is changed and may be messed up in the end, especially in Google Docs. You will notice unaligned images, out-of-place table data, incorrect font style, broken lines, missing paragraphs, etc. These are inevitable issues we will run into when using online free PDF editor, they are not born perfect nor full-fledged.
If you want to make your PDF look professional, you’d better start with a dedicated PDF editor.
We showed several solutions in this article to edit a PDF on Mac. To edit PDF file easily and professionally, you will need a dedicated program such as Cisdem PDFMaster, now give it a go and it will open a new world of PDF editing.
Jose specializes in reviews, how-to guides, top lists, etc. on PDF, data recovery and multi-media. On his spare time, he likes to travel or challenge some extreme sports.
Michael
Adobe is so expensive for us common users that I don’t think it’s necessary. Several other methods mentioned in the article are acceptable, and there are many free methods that I like.
tamara
I don't know why guys still use the GOD expensive Adobe, there are more.
antonia
What PDFManagerUltimate convinced me of the purchase was its ability to save PDF as many other editable formats.
Kian
I get used to adding interactive notes on the PDF for team members sharing their ideas, this just proves to be productive with such a tool.
weightloss rumor
I very much enjoyed reading your informative article. I do agree with a lot of your original material and believe it to be quite interesting.
Insurancewhisper
Thank you so much for this information. You have given my brain a real workout and I am grateful. I love intelligent content that is so well written. Good job.