By: Erik Vlietinck
Wed, March 12, 2008 - 10:28:00
Pros: Easy to use, full featured, certified PDF compatible, "edit everything!"
Contras: Expensive, slow at startup

http://www.enfocus.com
Score:

EnFocus has a specific application to edit PDFs. It’s called Neo, and it has full editing capabilities for PDFs. SmileOnMyMac has PDF Pen Pro which also has editing capabilities, but they are far more limited than what Neo is capable of. The issue with editing PDFs is that you’re editing a file format destined to be a definitive, print-ready format. My problem with that has always been: why is it necessary, and why not do with the limited tools Acrobat Professional delivers?

Even after testing Neo I still don’t have an answer that satisfies me. Why do we have preflight tools like Markzware’s FlightCheck, which allow early in the workflow preflighting, if we’re going to dissect the PDF file anyway? Is it really so difficult to convince and teach layout designers that they should create their design with the end-result in mind? I don’t buy into that belief. I think, if you have a good workflow system, you should be able to build the stepping stones right in the workflow. 

No Controls During Design Workflow

Unfortunately, it looks like too many production houses still do without such workflow systems, and if you don’t educate people where will they get their knowledge from? Products such as Neo therefore find their niche market relatively easy. The printer can make last-minute changes and correct or adjust page elements. Whereas PDF Pen Pro is not intended for such prepress work, Neo is.

Neo is an interactive PDF editor that works on any type of Mac, Power Mac and Intel Mac, and is compatible with Leopard. I can indeed say that you can do almost everything with Neo to a PDF document that you can do with InDesign to a layout document. Well, perhaps that’s a bit over the top, but many things that you’re not supposed to do to a PDF file, are possible, including creating replacement art, changing art, changing the page layout completely, replacing fonts, and much more.

The fact that you can do these things with Neo doesn’t also mean you can do them easily or fast. The manual says it’s a fast program, but my testing revealed an application that becomes fast long after having opened a PDF in the first place --a world of a difference. Neo took well over a minute before it would actually un-freeze when opening a PDF with moderate complexity on a Power Mac G5.

It took another 45 seconds after having clicked on a random object on the first page before the application finally became responsive throughout --from then on, I could edit the PDF without any noticeable lag. Do you need Neo? Neo costs 3000 Euros without trapping capabilities and 7500 Euros with trapping capability. In today’s world I’m afraid, Neo is nothing short of a necessity for printers and firms that deal with incoming layouts and illustration files in PDF format. It’s probably also the only program that is Certified PDF compatible.

My personal guess is that it would be better if we improved the workflow and educated the people who create the design.