Best Cheap Apps For Mac
- Best Apps For Mac Pro
- Best Apps For Macros
- Best Apps For Macbook Pro
- Best Cheap Apps For Mac Download
- Best Apps For Macbook Air 2018
- Best Mac Apps For Students
- Here then is our list of the best CAD software on Mac for 2020 in order of ranking. SmartDraw (Easiest For 2D CAD) If you’re looking for something powerful for 2D CAD design but amazingly easy to use and value for money, SmartDraw is the best 2D CAD software for Mac on the market.
- Dec 31, 2019 If you want to keep your Mac feeling as speedy as possible, look at one of the other choices in this best software for Mac list, but if you want robust, dependable protection, no.
Best Apps For Mac Pro
PDFs offer a lot of advantages over other file types, but being easy to work with generally isn’t one of them. What makes working with PDFs difficult is that they look familiar, but because PDFs are essentially images, they are much more restrictive. This can make editing them extremely aggravating when you know exactly what change you want to make, but your software won’t cooperate.
Jan 07, 2020 New apps are published every day, making it hard to find the best of the best — which is where we come in. We've gathered the best free apps for the Mac, all in one place so you don't have to go digging. My criteria for apps on this list. In researching the best free apps for the Mac, I started by using Apple's category list.
Fortunately, there are a couple of great tools available for the Mac that make working PDFs a much more pleasant experience. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best options available and crown our favorite: PDFpen.
Evaluation Criteria
In selecting the best PDF editor for Mac, we used the following criteria in selecting the winner:
- Overall Design — Working with PDF files is hard enough as it is. The PDF editor you choose should provide a clean user interface with features that are easy to understand and use so you can complete your work quickly.
- Viewing Speed — While much emphasis is placed on the ability to edit PDF files, equally as important is the ability to quickly find the areas you want to change. This can be slow and cumbersome if your PDF editor doesn’t provide a pleasant reading experience.
- Annotations — Most PDF editing tasks require annotating documents and sending them back to your clients or coworkers, so the PDF editor you use should allow you to mark up your PDF files quickly and easily.
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) — The ability to apply Optical Character Recognition (or OCR) is extremely important as it takes an image that looks like text and converts it to actual, computer-readable text. This allows you to search for (and depending on the app, even edit) text in your PDF files much like you would in a word processor.
- Additional Editing Features — Depending on your use case, you might need additional features that are only available in some higher-end (read: expensive) PDF editors. These features can either be completely unnecessary or essential to your workflow depending on your work.
- Sharing & Exporting Options — Once you have your PDF file ready to go, you need to be able to share it easily. In addition to sharing the PDF file itself, you might need to open the file in an external application. The PDF editor you choose should be able to send your file to other applications easily.
- Price — The price range for PDF editors is very broad, ranging from free to hundreds of dollars. You need to consider price when balancing what a specific PDF editor offers against your individual PDF editing needs. Power user features may be nice to have, but if you aren’t going to use them very often, the extra cost may not be worth it for you.
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Our Favorite PDF Editor: PDFpen
Smile’s PDFpen application is a functional, powerful PDF editor. While the user interface isn’t the best of the apps we tested, it’s generally easy to use and makes up for a lack of polish with powerful features to meet even the most rigorous demands of PDF power users.
There are lots of workflows that are possible in PDFpen, but we’ve looked at some common ones to show the power and flexibility packed into this program.
Annotations
Annotations in PDFpen are fairly straightforward. To highlight text in your PDF, just select Highlight from the tool bar, pick your color, then select the text you want to highlight.
To add a note or comment to your PDF, select the appropriate options from the Tools menu. Notes can be minimized and display a text bubble icon in the document that you can click to expand, and comments are displayed as text on top of the page.
You can also add shapes to your PDF document if you want. To do this, select the Shapes icon from the toolbar, select the type of shape you want, and then drag it into your document. Once you have your shape, you can easily select a new color, line format, or line thickness from the toolbar.
PDFpen also has a library of proofreading marks you can use to mark up your document. To access these, go to Window → Library and click the Proofreading Marks icon.
When you’re done annotating your document and you want to print it, you can click Show Details from the Print menu to select whether you want to include comments, notes, or both.
Signing Documents
Signing PDF documents is another common editing task. This takes a little bit of prep work in PDFpen, but once you have it set up you can easily reuse your signature by saving it to your library. To do this, you first need to sign your name and scan it to your Mac. Once you have the file, you can drag it into PDFpen, but you’ll see that the image file will have a background that obstructs whatever the signature is sitting on top of (usually it’s white). You can make the background transparent by going to Edit → Make Transparent Image. This will open a popup with an eyedropper tool where you can select the background color that you want to make transparent.
Once you select the background color and click Make Transparent, you’ll have a signature that you can drag to the appropriate place in the document and resize by dragging one of the corners.
Once you have your signature ready, you can save it for re-use. You can do this by going to Window → Library to make sure the Library window is open, then go to the Library window and select the + icon, and click Add Selected Imprint to save the transparent signature image to your Library.
Applying OCR
Optical Character Recognition is extremely important when dealing with PDF files as it allows the computer to identify the text contents of your document. Without it, all it sees is a bunch of pixels, which means you can’t do anything that involves text selection (i.e. copy & paste) and you won’t be able to search your document and find a selected word or phrase.
This is one area PDFpen really shines as it is incredibly easy to apply OCR to a document. In fact, when you open a PDF file in PDFpen that it thinks is scanned, a dialog box will appear and ask you if you’d like to apply OCR to a particular page or to the entire document. You can even select from multiple languages.
Redacting Text
Occasionally you’ll need to share PDF documents that contain text you don’t want others to be able to see (like address, telephone number, etc.). PDFpen has you covered there too, as it allows you to find and redact text to hide personal or sensitive information.
To redact text in PDFpen, first click the Find button in the toolbar and type in the text you want to redact. You’ll see all the instances of that text appearing in the document in the box below your search term. Next, click Find in the dropdown menu and select Redact.
Finally, select the instance you want to redact from the list and click Redact. If you want to redact all instances of the text, you can also click Redact All to redact them all at once.
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Exporting to Microsoft Word (or other word processors)
Let’s say you get a contract from someone that you want to edit. Frequently these documents are sent as PDF files specifically because it makes it harder to make changes, but PDFpen’s export to Microsoft Word feature makes this easy as well. All you have to do is click File → Export and select the desired file format.
This will allow you to easily edit the text in the document and you can then export back to PDF by clicking File → Print and selecting Save as PDF.
Additional Features
If your PDF needs extend beyond the scope of the standard PDFpen application, you can also check out PDFpen Pro, which includes the following additional features:
- Turn websites into PDFs
- Create and edit forms
- Export to Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF/A
- Add and edit permissions
- Create and edit Table of Contents
- Create links from URLs
PDFpen is availabe for $75 on the Smile software website, and PDFpen Pro is $125 if you need the additional features.
Runner Up: PDF Expert
PDF Expert by Readdle Software is an excellent application with one major flaw: It doesn’t have the ability to add OCR to your PDF files. This is absolutely critical when editing PDF files, so the lack of this single feature is unfortunately a dealbreaker for a lot of people.
For a lot of PDF-based tasks, PDF Expert is fine. It offers a blazing fast PDF reading experience, and has very good annotation tools. It also offers the tools to edit, merge, and sign documents as well as fill forms. Once you’re done editing your PDF file, PDF Expert integrates fully with the Mac share sheet so you can send it to any application that accepts PDFs. It does all of this with a beautiful user interface and a price tag ($59.99) that is on par with the other PDF editors we looked at. If you’re a student, you can even snag a small education discount when purchasing directly from Readdle.
Other Options
Adobe Acrobat Pro — Adobe actually created the PDF file format back in 1991, so you might think that Adobe Acrobat Pro would be the hands-down favorite for the best PDF editor for Mac. While it’s true that Adobe Acrobat Pro is an extremely powerful PDF editor, it’s also incredibly expensive. It’s available via subscription for $15/month or as part of the Creative Cloud suite ($49/month), and is also available as a stand-alone product for $449. In our opinion, Adobe Acrobat Pro is not as easy to use as PDFpen Pro, and the incredibly high price is not justified unless you really need some Adobe-only features or already have a Creative Cloud subscription.
Preview — Preview is the default PDF editor that comes bundled with Mac OS X, and is actually a pretty decent tool for basic PDF editing tasks. Depending on your needs, Preview might be enough for you. For example, you can make basic annotations, reorder pages, and even sign documents in Preview. But in our testing, annotations made in Preview sometimes didn’t display correctly in other PDF editors, and if you work with PDFs frequently, you’ll soon hit the limit of what Preview is capable of. Preview is “fine” for occasional PDF editing, but for anything more you’re going to want a more powerful PDF editor in your arsenal.
Everything Else – A quick internet search will show that there is no shortage of PDF editing software options, but many of them look like they haven’t been updated since before 2008 when Adobe released the PDF file format as an open standard per ISO 32000-1, and most lack even basic features that are present in Preview. Even if these companies are legit (and a lot of them aren’t), it’s not worth your time to look here. If you’re looking for a cheap/free PDF editor for basic PDF editing, try Preview first.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to edit PDFs on your Mac, quality options are hard to come by, and PDFpen is the cream of the (very limited) crop. PDFpen offers enough features to complete just about any standard PDF editing task quickly and easily, and offers a Pro version for those who need the extra features. If you don’t work with PDFs regularly or don’t need all the bells and whistles that PDFpen offers, PDF Expert offers a great user interface for basic edits and is probably powerful enough for most people at a much lower price point.
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Get your copy of this free quick-start guide to going paperless. From apps to scanners, discover everything you need to go paperless at home or the office.
Best Apps For Macros
Making a mixtape or accumulating your favorite videos on a DVD on a Mac can be hectic if you don’t know what you are doing. To accomplish this task seamlessly, you can always use DVD burning apps for Mac. Although, it is hard to decide which software could solve the purpose.
In this post, we have listed some of the DVD burning software for Mac.
Why To Choose CD/ DVD Burner Software for Mac?
Everyone has different reasons when it comes to choosing software which could burn a DVD on Mac. Some want to keep their media collection safe while some want to keep a backup of their data as there is always a risk of theft, data loss. The basic reason for using software is to make copies to ensure the data is safe.
You might be thinking at this time when people love to watch movies, TV shows on online streaming services, DVD burning seems to be a bit old-fashioned. However, some of us still want to keep the collection as many of old classics or prevalent TV shows and movies are not yet available on online streaming service. This may also come handy if you want to keep your favorite shows and movies offline
How Does it Work?
Best Apps For Macbook Pro
The DVD burning software extracts ISO image of a DVD and copies it to your hard drive or allows you to burn a new DVD. The software makes it possible to choose what you want to copy.
Let’s check out some of the best software to burn CD/DVD on Mac.
Best DVD Burner For Mac In 2020
1. iSkysoft DVD Creator (Mac)
iSkysoft DVD Creator is a DVD burner for Mac which consists of all the great quality of software which helps to burn CD & DVD. You can easily burn a disc and copy your content. It enables you not only burn DVD but you can also create a slideshow of your favorite photos with music. The software has a user-friendly interface so anyone can use it. All you need to do is drag the videos and drop them into the software window. Now select edit videos or DVD menu, then click “Burn” to start the process. The process will get completed in no time as the software burns the disc with high speed. No quality loss of the content.
See Also:10 Best Data Recovery Software for Mac
2. Any DVD Cloner for Mac
Any DVD Cloner for Mac is one of the best DVD burning software for Mac as it helps to burn DVD to DVD, ISO image file, DVD folder. It enables you to eliminate all DVD copy protections including RC, CSS, RCE, APS, and UOP. It can make copies of your DVDs with high speed. With the help of the software, you can get movies from DVD to iPod, PSP, iPad, iPhone, Xbox360, and Android devices in different formats such as M4V, MP4, MKV formats.
3. Xilisoft DVD Copy for Mac
Best Cheap Apps For Mac Download
Xilisoft DVD Copy for Mac is another DVD burner for Mac which can make it extremely easy to copy and backup a DVD. You also get to choose what file or movie you want to copy at a destination. This software has a capability to duplicate DVDs on Mac OS with original video and audio quality. One of the easiest software to use with a clean interface. It is compatible with DVD-RAM, DVD+-R/RW, and almost all DVD burners and players.
4. DVD Cloner for Mac
One of the best DVD burner software, DVD Cloner for Mac makes it easy to copy DVD with quality. The software is capable of copying protection systems and accessing all the region codes. It gives freedom to copy DVDs no matter what encryptions it has, to various destinations such as ISO image file, blank DVD disc and more. It also provides you with different options while copying the file from the source such as movie-only copy, customized copy, movie complete copy and more. You can preview the movie title with an inbuilt DVD player to make sure that you have copied the correct content.
Best Apps For Macbook Air 2018
5. Leawo Bluray Copy for Mac
Leawo Bluray Copy for Mac is one of the best DVD/CD burners for mac which could be used to burn a DVD/CD. It helps you to backup DVD disc & Blu-ray and allows you to create a folder, ISO film disc with fast speed. The software can take 1:1 disc to disc backup of, DVD-9, BD25, DVD-5, and BD50 with original quality. The software can also copy 3D Blu-ray disc with 3D effect intact. With 1:1 Blu-ray disc copy mode, a 3D effect of a source file is not changed when copied to destination disc.
6. Filmora Video Editor
Yet another good DVD burning software for Mac is not only good for burning discs but also can edit videos with advanced tools such as Picture in Picture, audio mixer, split screen, screen recording and more. Import audio, videos, and photos of any format apply effects, make changes to the video with editing tools and then send the video to DVD. You will not face quality loss in videos, photos, and other content on burning DVD. It is compatible with MOV, FLV, MP4 and more.
7. Burn
Burn is an amazing DVD burner for Mac software which solves the purpose of burning DVDs and comes with advanced options too. It is considered as one of the best CD burner software for Mac as it burns audio-CD discs easily. All you need to do is drag and drop your audio files on Burns audio list. You can also change advanced settings such as file dates, file permissions and more. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about conversion, the software does that for you. You can also choose what quality and size of the content you want.
8. Disk Burner
One of the best CD burner software for Mac, Disk Burner makes it easy to store all your media and other content on CDs and DVDs. Moreover, it heeds attention to data security as well. The software is powerful and works fastly. To burn the disc, all you need to do is insert CD or DVD, select the folder and choose “Burn CD or DVD”
See Also: Best Free CD Recovery Software For Mac
9. Simply Burns
Simply Burns is one of the best DVD burning software for Mac which has a simpler interface. Simply Burns is an open source software. The software allows you to burn videos and photos to DVDs. 1:1 Copy mode helps to get the exact copy of the content. The Rip Disc mode enables you to grab the tracks from an Audio CD.
10. iTunes
iTunes is a default software for Mac which helps to organize, play and buy media files. Additionally, the native app acts as a DVD burner for Mac as well. You can burn DVDs and store your music files, movies, and other content. To do so, you need to create a playlist and drag and add content to the playlist. Then control-click the playlist and choose Burn Playlist to disc to initiate the process.
Best Mac Apps For Students
So, these are some of the best DVD burning software for Mac. Try the one that matches your requirements and let us know what worked for you in the comments section below. You can also subscribe to our Newsletter for the latest tech updates