Tungsten Power PDF

Score9.4 out of 10

978 Reviews and Ratings

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Tungsten Power PDF

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What is Tungsten Power PDF?

Tungsten Power PDF (formerly Kofax) is an easy-to-use, secure and inexpensive solution to manage PDFs for businesses and individuals.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of the PDF Create Assistant, which can be used to create multiple PDFs at the same time from a variety of source formats. Create individual PDFs, or combine into one PDF package.

Screenshot of PDF Profiles that can be created to apply commonly desired settings to new PDF documents created in Power PDF.

Screenshot of the application's color, changed from purple to blue, light gray or dark gray.

Screenshot of some lightweight document automation that can also be achieved with the Watched Folder and Sequence features.

Screenshot of where packages can be signed with pre built templates using Kofax Sign Doc or other integrating e-signers

Screenshot of PDFs that can be navigated with a thumbnail view

Screenshot of the application's Office-like look and feel

Screenshot of PDF to Word conversion, and vice versa, which can be carried out in the application.

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Screenshot of the PDF Create Assistant, which can be used to create multiple PDFs at the same time from a variety of source formats. Create individual PDFs, or combine into one PDF package.

Merge or Split PDFs
Allows users to combine multiple PDF files into one document or split a single PDF into separate files.
Category average: 9.7
Secure PDFs
Offers options to password protect PDFs, apply digital signatures, redact sensitive information, or restrict permissions for viewing, editing, or printing.
Category average: 9.6
Undo and Redo Actions
Provides the ability to undo or redo previous actions to correct mistakes or backtrack changes made to the PDF document.
Category average: 9.3

Form Creation and Editing
Allows users to create interactive forms within the PDF document or fill out existing form fields.
Category average: 8.7
Edit Text and Images
Users can edit and manipulate text and images within the PDF document.
Category average: 8.7
Text Recognition (OCR)
Supports Optical Character Recognition to convert scanned documents or images into editable text.
Category average: 8.5

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Tungsten Power PDF.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

63.4%

111 installations of 175

“I 100% agree that this program is easy to use.”
— Founder & PR Strategist, Tall Tail Communications (Small Businesses)

#2 most frequent

Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services

5.1%

9 installations of 175

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

4.6%

8 installations of 175

“It did take a while to learn, but once you get down the basics, the rest flows easy.”
— Broker, Island Innovative marketing Co Inc (Small Businesses)

Pros

Cost-effective one-time purchase model, leading to significant savings over subscriptions.
Intuitive interface and minimal learning curve for quick user adoption.
Efficiently combines multiple PDF documents and image formats into single files.

Cons

Editing features, including alignment, header/footer, and font compatibility, require refinement.
User interface could benefit from a modern refresh and improved discoverability of advanced settings.
Occasional reports of performance issues, including slowness and unexpected shutdowns.

David Dryden

IT Manager in Information Technology at Ross And Liddell Ltd (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Power PDF in our organization to give us full flexibility to create and edit PDF files to meet our exact requirements. The tools in the product are just as capable as solutions that cost many times as much and fit our needs in capability and budget perfectly.

Pros

Creating PDF files from any format.
Merging multiple PDF's or other files into a portfolio.
Allowing Edits of PDF content.

Cons

I have not encountered any difficult using the tools I require in the product.

Return on Investment

It saves us a lot of time for tasks required.
The costs are massively less than some others and one-time only, as opposed to subscription-based.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

Ariadne Lih

Translator/Editor in Professional Services at Ariadne Lih (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I'm a translator and editor. I use Tungsten Power PDF as my all-purpose PDF software. In addition to viewing PDFs (including long ones like book manuscripts), signing contracts, and filling out forms, I proofread and edit client documents using comments and markup. I like using the "comment summary" feature to easily give clients a list of the edits they should make. I also use Tungsten Power PDF to provide certified translations. I use form creation and a custom stamp to create a customizable certification page, document assembly put everything together, and security features to make sure the document can't be changed after I send it.

Pros

It's lightweight and pretty fast. I don't think it's ever crashed on me, and it doesn't hang even when working with long/heavy documents.
Deleting/adding/rearranging pages is easy and intuitive. Conversion to and from Word also works well and it's easy to do a table of contents, pagination, etc.
It does not have AI and never tries to push any features on me! Such a relief. It just does what I bought it to do. The "find a tool" search bar helps make the toolbars easy to navigate.
I can quickly redact documents, so it's easy to send anonymized bank statements or real sample translations with client information hidden.
View options for seeing documents side-by-side or in different windows are good!

Cons

I would love to be able to text search with regular expressions (or a similar pattern system). It would make it a lot easier to find specific things in really big documents. And I don't always want to jump to the first search result -- I'd like to.
I'd like to allow more editing in my form fields, and also to be able to easily align them with non-dynamic text in the document (so I can have a form that says "signed on [date] at [place]" where date and place are fields that become part of the text.
I want more / more customizable dynamic stamps. E.g., one that says "paid" with a timestamp that I can set to a specific time.
For some reason it's really hard to crop pages / adjust page size.
It would be great if it could understand what footnotes are.

Return on Investment

When I send certified translations, I use specific security options to make sure my clients can do everything they need with the document (print, copy text) but can't change it (which would make the certification invalid and potentially make me liable for errors).
I have used Tungsten Power PDF to assemble legal and medical documentation with detailed tables of contents, page numbers, and other features that helped me make strong insurance claims and prepare for business disputes.
Having a permanent license for my PDF editor is not only cheaper but easier to manage: no unpredictable cost increases, and no ongoing overhead cost to track as a business expense.

Alternatives Considered

Foxit PDF Editor

Other Software Used

ABBYY FineReader, Trados Studio, Mozilla Firefox

Jacky Brice

CIO in Marketing at Vesteco (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Tungsten Power PDF to edit and create PDF packets to send to the owners we work for. We can assemble documents and edit existing PDFs. I also sometimes convert a PDF to a Word document for certain documents. We can also add pages together and extract specific pages or objects. The accounting department uses it to create monthly financial packets sent to the owner groups. It puts all the data in one place in a way that prevents accidental changes. If a document is a PDF and needs editing, you can either edit it in Tungsten Power PDF or convert it to a Word document using Tungsten Power PDF.

Pros

Edits PDF documents.
Turns a PDF into a word document.
Combines multiple PDFs into one document and vise versa.

Cons

The edit features have limitations.

Return on Investment

Time savings.
Low one time cost.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat and Adobe InDesign

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Windows, Zego, Zillow, COSTAR

Melissa Seigfried

Office Administrator at Schuylkill Conservation District (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, we use Tungsten Power PDF daily. The program is used for various programs. Reports are created, fillable application forms are created and used frequently. The program is also used to combine PDF files, making several reports into one PDF file. Without having fillable forms, our customers would have to wait for an application to be received via mail or email and them fill it out and then mail it back, or scan and email it back. By having fillable forms makes getting the customer's application submitted faster!

Pros

Fillable forms
Compiling multiple PDFs into one PDF document
Being able to edit a Word document

Cons

Some tutorials on uses of all the tools that are available would be helpful
Brief trainings on how to use
Not super easy to use for some staff that are not tech savvy

Return on Investment

This program is a huge time saver for our staff
Cost effective, we have definitely gotten our money out of the software we purchased

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat

Other Software Used

GIMP

Matthias Reuter

Consultant Circular Economy in Professional Services at Verband der Deutschen Heimtextilien-Industrie e.V. (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Tungsten Power PDF whenever free PDF programs reach their limits and don't offer the features I need. The main features I use are merging PDFs, extracting information from many filled-out PDF forms, creating Word, Excel, or PowerPoint templates from PDFs, and signing PDF files. In addition, its PDF commenting and editing features work significantly better and are more powerful than Adobe's, for example.

Pros

Combine PDF Pages.
Extract information from PDF forms.
Commenting and Editing Text in PDF.
Create MS Office Templates from PDFs.

Cons

Filling in your own signature in PDF Forms is hard to understand and needs more features (such as uploading your own signature as a PNG, etc.).
Creating your own formula and understanding field names, logic, values, etc., is quite hard; it is NOT intuitive at all. Needs to be improved!

Return on Investment

Extracting answers from many filled-out PDF forms now takes minutes instead of 3–4 hours, which saves us roughly 60 hours per year.
Two licenses cover our 10-person team's PDF needs: about 2 requests per day that free tools can't handle, saving about 110 hours per year (~€8–9k total).
It is noticeably cheaper than equipping the team with Adobe Acrobat Pro subscriptions (savings/difference ~€ 270€/year for two licenses), and it handles editing and commenting better.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Acrobat and Apple Preview

Other Software Used

Apple Preview, Adobe Acrobat

Foxit PDF Editor

Nitro PDF Pro

Adobe Acrobat

Tungsten Power PDF

What is Tungsten Power PDF?

Categories & Use Cases

Media