Thursday, March 19, 2009

Two Unexpected (and Free) PDF Related Tools

Generating PDFs: Google Docs

Need to generate a PDF in a hurry, and want to do it for free? You could use the already mentioned PrimoPDF (thanks Gareth!). Another option is to use Google Docs.

Just go to File >> Download As >> PDF.

I've been finding this functionality especially useful for contracts and other documents that weren't really intended to be edited once they've been agreed upon.

Tweaking PDF Docs: The Gimp

I was pleasantly surprised just how cleanly The Gimp handles PDF documents. It allows you to import the pages as layers or separate images - and Just Worked.

In this case, I used it to tweak a contract (that hadn't been agreed to yet), by editing out a particular clause. It just looked cleaner than me printing it out, crossing it out, and re-scanning the document.

The Gimp solution isn't perfect, as once you've extracted the PDF solution, you're stuck with images files. But still, for a quick edit it totally works.

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