PDF Escape is another tool in the ever-growing arsenal of software to view, create, and edit PDFs without ever launching an Adobe product. I’ve covered a number of these tools before in an earlier article, I’ll take the PDF, Hold the Adobe.
PDF Escape seems to partially overlap with the other tools in serving its full functionality. It really shines in the aspect of editing PDFs, but does not create them very well. There is no function to create or insert new pages. The only hope that since this is in beta, these functions might be added in later. If you are editing a PDF, you can do a lot more. You can enter text, fillable form fields, links, arrows, and more.
You can upload a PDF or edit one from a URL (with a current limit of 2 MB and 50 pages). Even though Adobe Reader is a free download and compatible with the majority of systems, you can do your customers one better and link to your PDF through PDFescape. If you register for an account, you can keep files on their server for 30 days to continue editing or share with colleagues who can see the file or, at your discretion, edit the file without even having to to have Adobe Reader. They can also fill-out forms and e-mail the completed version to you or save a copy seamlessly, without requiring the full version, Adobe Acrobat.
There are a couple tricks you can use to make the most of PDFescape while it lacks the ability to create PDF documents. If you just need to make a 1 or 2 page PDF you could easily do a quick search online for one and link it to PDFescape. Then use the white-out tool to cover all the existing text (and delete any unneeded pages under the Pages tab) and write your own with your text, arrows, and form fields.
That being said, it seems optimal to use PDFescape in conjunction with some of the other tools mentioned in the previous article. If you composed everything you wanted to say in a word processing program (Word 2007 or Open Office 3) and saved your document as a PDF (or using CutePDF writer which is Vista compatible), you could upload it to PDFescape to make any final touches, like fillable forms.
Check out PDFescape.