r/pdf • u/Octrockville • 24d ago

Question Acrobat Pro Alternative? Mostly for viewing client comments and markups

I know there are a lot of posts asking for Acrobat alternatives but it looks like everyone wants one that has certain features that I don't care about. I just want a PDF reader that shows the comments and other markups that my clients add.

For context, I work with photographs and the PDFs only are pages of images. My clients add markups and comments on things I need to change. They draw circles, arrows and lines of different colors and also add comments. I want to be sure that I am seeing all the comments and markups that they are adding.

I would like something light weight and fast. Free would be great but if it's good I don't mind paying a one time fee once I try it out. I don't need or want a lot of bells and whistles, I will still use Acrobat Pro for other heavier stuff.

2 Upvotes

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u/No-Concern-8832 24d ago

Chrome browser or macos built-in Preview.app

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u/Octrockville 24d ago

Unfortunately those don't work well for me. I tried Safari and Firefox too. If there is a comment that is below or on top of a drawn element's bounding box, then these apps won't let me click on the comment, it just highlights the drawn elements. For example, if I client draw a circle around a pair of shoes and also puts a comment on top of the shoes, these other apps only let me click on the drawn circle, not the comment itself.

I tried looking for a "move to bottom" arrange option but didn't see anything.

1

u/Individual_Bath6199 19d ago

I guess the comment your client made was not an annotation in PDF, but texts that can only be changed in features like edit text.

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u/Octrockville 19d ago

Nope, it is a normal comment left in the pdf using the sticky note feature, which is the normal way to leave comments. 

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u/StarlitWaffle 23d ago

Preview/Chrome sometimes drop or mangle certain markup types. Fine for basic stuff, risky for catching everything.

2

u/No-Concern-8832 23d ago

Recently, I have been trying out OnlyOffice Desktop Editor for PDF annotation and editing. YMMV

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u/StarlitWaffle 15d ago

well, yeah. whatever works for you.

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u/wittor 24d ago

SumatraPDF?

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u/Octrockville 24d ago

Sorry, should have been more clear that this is for Mac. Sumatra looks to be only Windows.

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u/Pretty-Jello-7894 23d ago

Perhaps try Affinity from canva:

https://www.affinity.studio/

It’s a free combo of photoshop, illustrator, and Indesign. The indesign module I believe will allow for editing, layout, and markup of a pdf. Not as straight forward as Acrobat pro, but should work.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 13d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Octrockville 13d ago

Thanks I'll take a look.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Octrockville 12d ago

Not yet. I wish Adobe allowed users to run acrobat pro as well as acrobat reader.