Bluebeam PDF Revu PDF creation

The PDF file format lets you produce, annotate and exchange documents no matter what software was used to create them. As Adobe created the format, it is inextricably linked to its Acrobat software.

Bluebeam PDF Revu isn’t the first alternative to Acrobat, but it differs from other imitators by providing a fully featured and reliable means of working with PDFs.

The Standard Edition adds a button to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint interfaces for direct PDF creation, while a special printer driver allows support for other applications.

As with Acrobat, it provides a suite of editing, annotation and comment tools, but it replicates other features, such as comment summaries, document comparison, thumbnails, bookmarks and searching.

It also supports digital signatures, password protection and print disabling. A redaction feature enables permanent removal of sensitive content.

As well as text editing, there’s a wide array of mark-up tools. Annotations are automatically added to a tool chest, from which they can be dragged to other locations within the PDF document.

Revu has useful tools for those working with plans and drawings, including scale-based measurements of length, area, perimeter, diameter, angle and volume. These measuring tools snap to vector elements within the PDF. There’s a slightly more expensive Cad edition aimed specifically at Autocad and Solidworks users.

At £67.50 from UK supplier Brightergraphics.co.uk, it’s considerably cheaper than Acrobat, but Bluebeam isn’t suited to all production environments. Its PDF export lacks the features that pre-press users like to see and, without a Mac or Unix version, it doesn’t integrate well into cross-platform environments. It also lacks support for Acrobat forms.

However, for organisations that exchange and review PDFs on Windows PCs, Bluebeam PDF Revu is certainly worth looking into.