Hello!

Ben with Veracity here, hoping everyone had a great Fourth. I want to share a couple suggestions on the topic of PDFs.

We at Veracity work with hundreds of abstractors in counties all over the US, and it seems clear that many folks are struggling to find a reliable, affordable way to create and edit PDFs. (Adobe, of course, is incredibly expensive and cumbersome.)

Allow me to make three recommendations:

CUTEPDF:

https://www.cutepdf.com/index.htm

Specifically, the CutePDF Writer. When you install this app on your computer, it acts like a printer! That means if you have any kind of document open in any other app, and you hit Print, one of the printer options will be CutePDF. It will print your document to a PDF which you can easily save to your desktop. This app is FREE to download, is regularly updated to keep it secure, and is VERY easy for your computer to run.

PDF ESCAPE:

https://www.pdfescape.com/

PDF Escape is a FREE editor for PDFs with all the tools you will typically need. The only downside is that you have to upload your document to their website, make your edits, and then download/save the final version. It's an extra step, but again, it is FREE, secure, and regularly updated. (There is also a paid version which you install and run on your desktop like any other app.)

GREENSHOT:

https://getgreenshot.org/

Greenshot is not a dedicated PDF editor, but rather is a powerful FREE screenshot tool. Here's an example of how I often use it: I will find a property using a GIS website, take a screenshot of the map, and open the image in Greenshot. Then I can highlight text in the image, blur parts out, add notes, draw boxes, and so much more. Often, I will use it to take a screenshot of part of a specific document, highlight some text, paste that image into an email, and send that to a client to answer their question. Like the others here, Greenshot is secure and regularly updated.

I have been using all these apps for years and I endorse them wholeheartedly. I hope they are helpful to you. Good luck out there!