Adobe now requires you to purchase a subscription to rotate PDF pages | Hacker News Reader

Adobe now requires you to purchase a subscription to rotate PDF pages

merveilles.town

208 pointsnoughts133 comments

For anyone on a Mac: all of these features in the screenshot are free with Preview. I assume OP is not, but something people should keep in mind.

This ^. Don't give Adobe money is my motto.

Mine is don't give Apple money.

In Preview on Mac:

CMND+R = rotate right

CMND+L = rotate left

Preview.app is very underrated. It feels like a huge omission that other platforms don't have something similar built in.

And if you need more editing features than Preview.app (which is already very powerful), PDF Expert [1] is my go-to on the App Store.

[1]: https://pdfexpert.com/

Preview.app — Underrated since 2001.

I distinctly remember a precursor of some sort being available on NeXTStep 3.0 in ‘95 or thereabouts.

I don’t know how much code is still left from back then but it’s the same application as NeXTSTEP’s, although strangely Mac OS X Ventura dropped support for rendering PostScript (there used to be an instant conversion process that would render the PostScript as a PDF even after Apple moved to Quartz from Display PostScript).

I wish this got talked about more, Preview is both crazy good and free. You can split PDFs apart, merge multiple different ones into one file, use password protected files, edit and annotate them, add your signature, and so much more. Best of all, it just works, all the time.

What is the trick to merging multiple PDFs into one? That never seems to work for me.

I open them both, then select and drag the pages from one to the other. (Left side bar where the page thumbnails are shown)

As I just posted elsewhere, I do find I sometimes have to copy a PDF before it'll let me do this to it. I assume it's some kind of flag that isn't preserved through the copy and there's actually a better way to fix it, but my work-around is simple enough that I've never bothered to figure out what it is.

Either drag between Preview windows or a simple copy paste works for me.

Open up two docs in preview. Let's say Doc A is the one you want to merge into. Open Thumbnail view in each doc. Select pages in Doc B you want to merge over to Doc A (some or all). Drag and drop into thumbnails view in Doc A. Reorder as desired. Profit.

Copy + paste also works.

Been a while since I used it but IIRC you should be able to show the page thumbnails sidebar in each document and drag them from one window into another.

Probably also accessible via Preview’s Automator/Shortcuts actions if it’s something you need to do frequently.

Copy a selection of pages from an existing PDF, choose File > New from clipboard. From that point you can edit the pages in the PDF using the thumbnails sidebar and drag pages from other PDFs into the bar.

Agreed, but the inability of Preview to edit text must be noted.

PDF is meant as an output format.

Fonts might or might not be embedded.

Paragraphs might be split into chunks, words, characters or simply outlines.

There’s no typesetting config. Nothing about margins, spacing, hyphenation, etc.

But then again, sometimes there is. The point is that it’s an output format.

FoxIt PDF (and others) edit PDF perfectly.

Even Word, LibreOffice, InkScape, etc do to a certain extent.

That’s like editing a printed version of a website :-)

I’ll work to a certain extent. Not sure how line breaks would work, but PDF is an extensible format, so these days they might include enough info to edit that

Preview is great.

I can also recommend Skim (free and open source) for macOS for some additional functionality [1].

[1]: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io/

Also Sumatra on Windows.

Love Preview and for all those basics find it much easier than Adobe for rotating, rearranging, deleting, merging, etc. Alas for some things still need Acrobat. For forms that need to be filled in more often than not preview is problematic where the entered text doesn’t appear right or issues with drop-downs etc. Like how I prefer safari but still run into compatibility issues sometimes and need Chrome. Also Adobe is better at compressing file size while retaining quality. And finally if I need to ocr a file and make the text or elements editable need Adobe. Would love to see Preview improved in those areas as solid as Preview it’s not one to see growth in features or compatibility over the decades.

Preview does OCR now too, I think. I can select text in JPEGs, I presume it works on PDFs too.

It’s better than free: already paid for.

I had to download Acrobat for something (I don’t recall what) on my work computer, and it set itself as a default, and for the past few weeks whenever i open a PDF I’m wondering why it’s taking forrreeevvverr. Then I remember it’s Adobe and not Preview.

I need to uninstall it but I keep forgetting. This is a good remembrance

Stuff people don't know about Preview.app:

- Paste images that were copied to the clipboard. Just open Preview and press CMD-N

- Split, re-arrange and merge PDF documents. Just drag pages into the sidebar

- Sign documents. Click the annotation button in the menu bar, sign either on touchpad, ipad or hold an ink signature on paper into the webcam.

- OCR (new with macOS ventura). Just click/drag/double-click on text in images.

What more did I forget?

> Paste images that were copied to the clipboard. Just open Preview and press CMD-N

This one is new to me. TIL. Thanks!

You can remove white/back backgrounds from images as well, with the "Magic Lasso" selection tool. Adjust the selection level until it covers the object you want, cmd+c to copy that object out of the image, then cmd+n to create a new image from that selection.

It's legit one of the reasons I'll have trouble ever leaving macOS. I've not seen anything as good at its particular niche. It's the perfect intersection of lightweight, snappy, reliable (so many other PDF tools are crashy or prone to getting in weird, broken states), and featureful.

OCR works for me in Monterey.

I recently had to crop a pdf, Export pdf to png, crop and save as pdf. All from Preview app.

Not really something you missed but if I want to increase the “viewport” of an image, I just take a screenshot (to clipboard), create a new document, paste the screenshot, and then go back to my original image and copy/paste it to the new document.

This is helpful if you want to extend an image horizontally or vertically (or both).

You could also increase the dimensions of the original image, but it would “zoom in”, which I don’t want.

Not sure I explained it well…

Annotation. Colour correction including white balance picker. And so on

Preview is the best tool for working with PDFs I have used. Just being able to cut pages and reorder them is strangely difficult for everything else.

You can also use Preview to carve up PDFs and assemble new documents from the pages of multiple other PDFs. This is really handy for making e.g. custom bestiaries for RPGs, using pages from official books, since usually you use only a few beasts in a campaign, out of a set of potentially hundreds of first- and third-party ready-to-use beasts. Nice to have them all in one PDF, with nothing you don't need. And of course you can pdf-export whatever you like from your own documents and mix that in, too.

For some reason I've never bothered to figure out, I do sometimes have to copy a PDF before it'll let me re-arrange or copy/cut individual pages out of it. But not always. I assume it's because of some kind of flag on downloaded files in macOS, but IDK.

For anyone else I recommend pdf arranger [1]

[1] https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger

And you can easily edit password-protected PDFs by "Printing" as PDF and edit the "print out" PDF.

Don’t forget that the whole macOS GUI is based on PDF.

Back when macOS was still called Mac OS X, (a subset of) PDF was the internal rendering format for Quartz rendering engine[0]. Their tech demo's also boasted about the ability to trivially edit PDF's. I don't know if any of that still remains in the current macOS versions, but I'm glad PDF editing and 'printing' (directory to PDF file or Preview as PDF) support was never dropped. Along with the excellent built-in screenshot and recording shortcuts.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2000/05/mac-os-x-dp4/4/

There's a lot of free tools that will do this too on all platforms. Xodo is my go to on Windows/Android/iOS. On Linux evince and okular are both pretty good.

Had to uninstall Adobe Reader this week because it's become unbearably slow on my 2015 MacBook Pro. I'm talking it can't smooth scroll a 2-page resume PDF.

Preview does the trick just fine.

Preview is very capable but it's UI is so opaque. After years of use I still discover features accidentally, almost like easter eggs.

And for those on Windows and Linux, a somewhat close alternative for Preview is Okular - https://okular.kde.org/en-gb/.

And guess who developed CUPS? :)

Easy Software Products.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070109004135/http://www.cups.o...

When has Reader allowing rotating pages? I don't think Reader has ever allowed saving or modifying PDFs in any way save for perhaps filling form fields...

What Adobe is doing, however, is to add icons and menu entries for editing functionality that will never work in Reader, advertising the features of their PDF editing software. That's, basically, yet another extremely intrusive advertising strategy that's annoying as hell and that I guess we are bound to see even more of it in the future.

I wondered as well. adobe pro always needed a subscription/paid license.

Windows: Sumatra PDF. Linux: Zathura.

These are so much better than Acrobat. Might not do everything you can imagine but they are excellent and a very good default.

Sumatra PDF is also, AFAIK, the best Epub reader for Windows.

Sumatra is uses the MuPDF library which is excellent. Zathura however uses Poppler which is lacklustre.

There is a MuPDF plugin for zathura that at least some distros seems to use by default.

Apple:

Apple has been quietly using the same screenshot functionality since the 90s, and has continually iterated over improvements on Preview since the early 2000s.

I find the macos shortcuts to be poorly chosen and un-discoverable, but they've stuck with it, so finding how to take a screenshot is extremely easy.

Microsoft:

Microsoft is on their third major revamp of screenshots. There are six(!) different ways to invoke a screenshot on Window 11 - printscrn key, Win+Shift+S, snip and sketch, snipping tool, game bar, pressing the volume up+power buttons on supported devices (but not all). Microsoft's official website suggests third party tools in their app store as well. Each way offers different options (such as whole screen, individual app, cropping, etc). Some options quietly redirect you to other options, while still offering the previous option in contextual menus. Options will vary in where they place the image as well - filesystem, clipboard, or directly into a window for you to chose.

Microsoft uses their browser as a featureless PDF reader. Other Preview.app functionality can be found within a combination of paint.exe and the new Windows Photos app - each with a completely different UI paradigm. They do not have an OCR solution - or if they do, I haven't found it.

My understanding is that Windows 12 is a direct attempt to resolve a lot of these issues, and that Windows 11 has been deemed "transitional", but it's still extremely exhausting. I personally still prefer Windows over macOS (for a lot of reasons unrelated to Windows' incredibly boneheaded rough edges); but, please, Microsoft, what the fuck are you doing!?

I am using Evince in both Linux and windows.

I have an Acrobat Pro 7.0 license I paid for years and years ago. I have a single use case: I scan a lot of vintage computer manuals as a hobby. Pro offers fine control over compression options. Acrobat has been nagging me for more than a decade to register it (though I registered it when I bought it). A couple of times I've had computer crashes or migrations and getting 7.0 reinstalled on the new machine was a pain.

It galls me to think they want $500 for me to buy Pro again when I don't need or want any of the new features. I just want the existing functionality I paid for to continue working.

Do any of the alternatives have similar fine control of compression options that Acrobat Pro exposes? I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Same here but with 9.0. My only complaint is that it‘s a little wonky with a high DPI display.

The large number of ancient Acrobat Pro licenses floating on ebay seems to hint you are not the only one...

ColorSync Utility on macOS (sorry, not sure of the right name in English) allows to add filters.

I've used it to great success for down-/resizing/-sampling all kind of PDFs which sometimes are basically full pictures on each page.

Create own filter, add "picture compression", mode "JPEG", move the slider just a little right from the middle...

Start ColorSync app, open PDF, select filter from lower left, click "Apply" and then either "Save" or "Save as..."

Protip: I only recently learned that LibreOffice is a pretty good PDF Editor. https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-do-i-edit-pdf-files-create...

In my experience, LibreOffice Draw usually messes up the formatting of any PDFs I open in it. Nothing entirely unsalvageable, but text gets slightly moved around and winds up overlapping other text in a way that's annoying for future readers of the document.

This is not a pro tip. LibreOffice can import a PDF and export a PDF but, even with minimal changes, the PDF you get out won't necessarily have a similar binary representation or appearance to the original.

Most of the PDF editing I do is the equivalent to physically typing over, covering over, or cutting elements out of a print document. I would not expect a an editor to be able to (for example) reflow the layout of PDF.

I just opened a PDF in LibreOffice, and immediately exported it to PDF, without making any changes.

I deliberately chose a PDF with very few images, simple formatting and very few fonts.

The output PDF differed materially from the original:

- not only was the font different, but the original fixed-width font had been replaced with a proportional font

- multiple lines that had consistent horizontal alignment in the original were now jagged

- numbers that were in a column are now no longer directly below each other

> This is not a pro tip.

I think there's also the implication of 'pro', as if the rest of HN are not software professionals. I'd suggest GP to revise the structure of their comment in order to not offend the entire forum.

In my experience, every open source PDF Reader/Editor, is ATROCIOUS and messes up the formatting big time. I wish there was an alternative out there that was as good as adobe, but as with all of their other tools, the alternatives always leave much to be desired.

And then adobe takes advantage of that fact (Their product is second to none), and rail their customers by making their products expensive AF.

TLDR: Adobe products are AMAZING. Their pricing structure and marketing techniques and straight up disrespect to their customers is absolute garbage.

I have been actively moving away from Adobe products. Recently purchased Affinity Photo to replace photoshop and I use Preview (on Mac) for all pdf work.

The Affinity products on Mac are some of the cleanest, polished, reasonably easy to use, responsive, and stable pieces of commercial image software I've used in years. Very impressed with what they've done so far.

They also have a good offer on at the moment. They’ve released V2 and are offering all 3 apps on all supported formats for a single payment. Personally I only use Designer so didn’t partake, but even that is discounted a little.

I’ve ben actively avoiding Adobe for about a decade now. Affinity is great. Adobe needs to learn to respect its users and not take them for granted while feeding them crap.

Shameless plug: for anyone looking for an alternative, I’ve been building SimplePDF.eu [1] on my free time for last couple of years or so.

The editor is entirely free to use and works locally (nothing gets sent to my server: neither the document you load nor the data you fill in [2])

[1] https://simplepdf.eu

[2] https://simplePDF.eu/privacy_policy

This story is unclear and possibly misleading from the posted image. There are three versions of Adobe PDF software:

- Adobe Reader desktop app (free and lets you rotate PDF pages)

- Adobe Pro desktop app (full PDF editing and requires subscription)

- Adobe PDF online (requires a free account and lets you rotate PDF pages: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online.html)

You can still rotate PDF pages using the Reader desktop app. However, as other posters have recommended, there are many alternative PDF apps. Avoid Adobe if you can.

2028: Adobe requires additional fees to display vowels.

Rl sftwr dsnt nd vwls nywy.

Crtv cld

2030: PDF viewer takes 1 minute to start, unless you subscribe to the "start in 3 seconds deluxe option".

2032: AI constantly check yor workspace. In case of politically incorrect content you wouldnt be able to export.

Fake news. Acrobat Reader (free) never let you edit PDFs. Reader has always let you rotate the view. <View> <Rotate View>. Clockwise and Counterclockwise!

I remember learning PostScript (~1993?) by reading the Red Book, and thinking how awesome it was that this company Adobe, which I'd never heard of, had created a new programming language just to solve once and for all the problem of specifying vector graphics to a printer, and had written such a nice book to help others use the language. It was magical to be able to write a text file in emacs, send it to the printer, and have cool images come out.

Good old days.

btw PDF started as Project Camelot at Adobe in ~1990, as a way to capture the results of executing a PostScript program [1]. I'm curious if there is still that kind of foundational innovation happening at Adobe, and if not, why it died?

[1] https://blog.adobe.com/en/2018/06/14/evolution-digital-docum...

Did you ever look in detail at Common Ground? IIRC, it was not only an Adobe PDF alternative, but the format was considerably more modern and powerful. Sadly, it seems like it lost just because PDF was similar to PostScript, a fact that never really made any real difference to anyone but programmers writing PDF parsers. (And PostScript smelled like the future, since Display PostScript was the basis for displays (well, kinda) at NeXT and Sun, and those were definitely the cool kids...

That sounds cool; hadn't heard of it. The web searches I've just tried to look for technical details yielded not much; are there any extant open specs?

*in Acrobat Reader.

There is an online version that requires signing in, but no purchase.

https://adobe.com/acrobat/online/rotate-pdf.html

There are some other tools there as well.

Disclosure: Adobe employee, not in Document Cloud.

More than ever I feel vindicated in the decision to avoid non-free software. It's limiting of course but in tandem with a fully reproducible system it is guaranteed that my current workflows will always be available... I can't imagine doing anything in software without that foundation.

The recent news about Adobe removing Pantone colors from existing projects is even more egregious:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/1/23434305/adobe-pantone-su...

This isn't an option for most professionals who need Adobe's products.

Adobe Document Cloud has some nice features that are unique in the market, and are worthy being paid features. But sadly they are hidden under a sea of very basic feature like this one, totally unworthy of a paid feature — this make the good feature less noticeable.

One of the paid feature that I really like is fluid PDF on mobile screen. Most PDF is not very readable on mobile screen, it needs pan and zoom. The fluid feature make the layout become more HTML-like and fluid, and adapt to mobile screen size. That is a feature to monetize. not rotating pages!

I've used a bunch of ImageMagick scripts for a while to export, rotate and manipulate PDFs. No need ever to buy subscriptions.

I wanted to combine a few PDFs into 1 big one, and I noticed adobe.com offers that for free (but it requires user registration). Now I just remembered that Gimp can open PDFs, and each page would be its own layer. Probablt good enough for some light editing.

Couldn't rotate just be an in-app purchase?

I don't use it enough to need a subscription.

Could, sure, but that would mean you pay them less money. They want you to pay them more money.

I would hope this problem wouldn't apply to anyone who uses Hacker News.

What is a good alternative. one that doesn’t look like it intern project?

I like SumatraPDF. It's minimalist, to be sure, but it won't let you down.

Master PDF. Cross platform even native linux support.

You can view PDF files in most Internet browsers.

pdf.js!

I wish most browsers also allowed users to annotate, rotate, and manipulate PDFs. The solutions mentioned in this thread will work, though!

I just tested and Edge, you can annotate, highlight and draw over it, and it will save, but rotating it is temporary.

I use Foxit reader. It's free and cross platform with great UI.

Agreed.

I’m 80% at requiring it for anyone at the company that doesn’t need full acrobat to create PDFs. And even then I’m close to pushing the version of FoxIt that does that.

Foxit

PDF viewing: Chrome PDF editing: LibreOffice

In chrome://flags you can search for "PDF" and enable the following: Performs OCR on inaccessible PDFs, PDF XFA support, Accessible PDF Forms, Enable Region Search on PDF viewer.

Okular from KDE project, they have a windows release too.

I use okular and it works great on linux. Once in a while PDFs with forms display funny, or some minor challenges with data entry....but not sure if the issue is how the pdf was made or if okular. Nevertheless, i really like it. Plus as stated, a few KDE applications like okular happliy can be used on Windows. (For work machine, where i am forced to use Windows, i happily have used the Kate text editor.)

pdf arranger is pretty slick if you're on linux: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.jeromerobert.pdf...

I actually like PDF Expert better than Adobe itself. It is easier and more responsive for general editing work.

I think PDF Xchange is the most feature rich for what I use it for. You do have to buy once to unlock all functionality, but a very large amount is available in the free version.

On Linux: zathura, evince, okular for viewing. I don't know of a friendly GUI tool for editing PDFs, but combinations of imagemagick and tools such as pdfunite work well. A bit off-topic, but nomacs and imv are nice for images.

For simple operations I like "PDF Split and Merge"

Preview, on Mac. It’s great.

torrent Adobe Acrobat XI, and don't feel bad about it because it's Adobe.

IlovePDF desktop app for Windows is quite good and free.

https://www.ilovepdf.com/desktop

I'm in the process of removing Adobe from my pipeline. What's the best alternative to Lightroom?

darktable is good. https://www.darktable.org/

Capture One in terms of functionality. But same s*itty pay model.

I no longer use Acrobat on Android since an upgrade required permissions to delete any PDF from my phone.

No way San Jose!

What do you recommend on Android? I've been using the Dropbox viewer, but a standalone viewer would be handy.

I've been using Dropbox too :)

Oddly enough when I right click and and select 'Rotate view clockwise' it still works.

Maybe not rolled out to you yet? I'm sure they have a progressive roll out system in case of breaking updates.

The only rollout here is they've added another ad for their subscription. Acrobat Reader has never had edit capabilities - you can't and have never been able to edit and save the PDF in any way (except filling form fields maybe?).

You could always rotate the view, that's not changed.

The rotate option under the view menu works, but doesn't let you save the rotated view. If you attempt to rotate pages from the edit menu, you get a pop up forcing you to subscribe to use that feature.

"Rotating is hard!"

Please drink verification can.

Welcome to the Identity Processing Program of America!

This was always the case. Adobe Reader has never had edit capabilities.

This is not new.

There truly is some evil genius (?) running Adobe and just laughing a diabolical laugh as they come up with new 'features'

Microsoft's Edge on Windows lets you annotate and rotate PDFs.

There are a bunch of open source software that does this

Depend on proprietary standards--win stupid prizes.

Same old, same old.

I have used PDFsam for years. It rules

pdfjam on Linux can do it for free. As can Mac.

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