PDF software

NightDragon

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hsu

Install a printer driver that prints to a PDF file.
http://www.howtogeek.com/150891/how-to-print-to-pdf-in-windows-4-tips-and-tricks/

Edit: my company requires expense reports in PDF format, where you need to tag an image of each receipt with a corresponding line item on a standardized form, all in one PDF. So I create a MS Word doc, paste all the photos of my (resized) receipts that I took via my cellphone camera, insert the standardized form (which I redid as a MS Word doc), put stylized numbers over each receipt image to match up the line items on the form, print out the whole thing to a PDF file, and email that PDF to the finance department.

JohnnyCache

My company uses something called Peernet to print to a tiff, then we convert them to PDFS in a jiffy with something called Irfanview. Irfanview is a pretty good utility and it's free. Peernet is rougher but technically does most of what you're asking.

LostNinja

My work computer had something called "primo pdf" on it before they realized I would be doing that sort of thing daily and got the full acrobat.

I never really played with it that much, but It might suit your needs.

JohnnyCache

it's probably also not cost effective if you're not into the monthly, but you technically still can buy a licensee for a single fee, I think it's either 249 or 299.

bowen

If you've got Windows 10 there's a Microsoft PDF printer that works really well for that stuff as well. Not sure about the trim marks though.

Siska

I use Foxit Reader for all my PDF needs. But I don't really do advanced stuff with so not sure if it meets all your requirements. But it is FREE and you can edit PDF files with it.

RoyceSraphim

I feel like an idiot for asking this but why is creating a word/open office document and saving it as a PDF cost prohibitive?

zepherin

If you don't mind putting PDFs into the Internet, I've used pdfescape in the past which is a free online pdf editor. Works ok.

http://www.pdfescape.com

hsu

NightDragon wrote: »

NICE TO HAVE: Create a PDF with selectable text from a Photoshop file (able to do this with Adobe Acrobat DC).

Just noticed this. Adobe Photoshop has an option to let you save as a PDF. Both the old CS and current CC versions of Photoshop let you do this.

NightDragon

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bowen

ImageMagick might work for that stuff, it's command line based, you could probably batch stuff to it:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30397782/command-line-imagemagick-gutter-and-crop-marks
http://imagemagick.org/discourse-server/viewtopic.php?t=17211

baudattitude

I strongly recommend against the "it's cheap because it's an old version!" resellers, particularly from eBay. I did a couple of months in Adobe customer service several years back and I had to break a lot of hearts with the "I'm sorry, but that serial number has been invalidated due to abuse. If you can fax me a proof of purchase from an Adobe authorized reseller, I can issue you a new serial number..." line.

If you can get a brand-new shrink wrapped box copy it might be safer? But there are some really dodgy resellers out there.

Tofystedeth

I've used CutePDF, never heard of Soda. I don't remember if those do selectable text or just do the PDF as an image.
A lot of them are based on Ghostscript, which you can get all by itself. Just save the PhotoShop file as a PostScript file and use GhostScript to do the conversion.

NightDragon

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Tofystedeth

Yeah, in the GhostScript install folder there should be a bunch of executables with names like ps2pdf that do various conversions. There's like a billion and a half flags and parameters you can pass to them, so you'll have to fiddle a while to find one that gives a result you like, then make a batch script or something to do it automatically, or just copy paste the parameters into a text file you can look up when you need to run it.

Derrick

NightDragon wrote: »

hsu wrote: »

NightDragon wrote: »

NICE TO HAVE: Create a PDF with selectable text from a Photoshop file (able to do this with Adobe Acrobat DC).

Just noticed this. Adobe Photoshop has an option to let you save as a PDF. Both the old CS and current CC versions of Photoshop let you do this.

You'd think, right? The funny thing is, I had this ability initially....and then once my trial of Acrobat ran its course and I uninstalled it, it ended up removing all PDF ability from Photoshop. When before even downloading Acrobat at all, it worked perfectly. Now I get to the end of the saving dialogue and it gives me an error that I 'no longer have that functionality'. Thanks, Adobe! >: (

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Wow. That's very weird. Maybe try uninstalling, clear any misc Adobe folders and reinstall? I've worked with ancient versions of Photoshop and they can all save to pdf.

Other than that, you can probably save your file from photoshop in either a tiff or eps format and insert it into a program that can save to pdfs. Open Office is free and can save to pdf for example, but I have no idea if it compresses the images.