PDFTK Review

Control digital documents

In the continued effort to bring reduce paper usage with digital tools, ways to modify and rearrange digital documents are becoming increasingly important. Although the portable document format (PDF) is thought of as something you only use at the office, tools such as the Kindle are coming out that might also make this the book distribution format of choice. PDFTK is just such a program.

Although far from the smoothest software I've worked with, its packed with easy-to-use and very useful features. If you work with PDFs and don't have a lot of money for all the Adobe software out there, this program is indispensable. Even if you do, the password control system may make it required to have for your computer

Features (from the webpage):

• Collate - allows you to rearrange (reorder, delete, & duplicate) pages in a single document and/or merge pages from multiple PDF documents.
• Split - cut long documents up into pages (each page getting its own numbered PDF file)
• Insert - once you've split, you can add the new pages and coallate.
• Stamp - (a.k.a. watermark)
• Rotate
• Add or remove Password Protection

Unfortunately, the last update was over a year ago at the time of this writing but this software is still chock-full of useful items.

Download:

• PortableApp's version (recommended)
• Portablefreeware's listing and how to make portable (requires Universal Extractor)
• PDFTK (regular download) Homepage

Version: 3.5.3
Size: 2.7 megs
RAM Usage: 3.5 megs
License: GPL
Score: 8 out of 10 - May scare away non-technical people -- help file is fairly sparse but most of the controls are self-expanatory.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Yes - I use it regularly