1. Home
  2. PDF Editors
  3. Tungsten Power PDF Reviews
  4. User Review of Tungsten Power PDF
Great value and versatile tool. Shame it's a bit flaky though.
June 16, 2021

Great value and versatile tool. Shame it's a bit flaky though.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Power PDF Advanced

Overall Satisfaction with Kofax Power PDF (formerly Nuance)

Preparation of all sorts of documents. Preparation of patent specifications, reports letters, drawings.

Review and annotation of complex documents including legal and technical, patent specifications.

OCR for searching/editing documents in multiple languages.
  • Value for money.
  • Editing PDFs.
  • Manipulating pages and documents.
  • Compressing and OCR.
  • Standard formats (PDFa, etc).
  • Open as tabs instead of separate windows (when it feels like it!).
  • Extracting drawings.
  • Crashes regularly in the middle of complex work, e.g. when annotating. This is AWFUL. Upgraded from 3 to 4 and no improvement.
  • OCR makes ridiculous errors when the word and the characters are crystal clear. e.g. [0001] is always rendered as l0001l no matter how clear. A1 is always rendered AI no matter how clear the original. Easy words are rendered as nonsense. Endless examples could be provided.
  • "Open in new tab" option is great but the program forgets the setting and requires restart.
  • In editing objects, it is impossible to select the desired one where objects overlap.
  • When selecting the pop-up toolbar only sometimes works (e.g. for Copy or Highlight). Another right click is needed.
  • Likewise the tools to adapt font, etc. of the Typewriter sometimes work and sometimes are just greyed out or do nothing.
  • Sometimes cost and time.
  • (Negative) costs time when crashes in the middle of complex jobs.
  • Allows rapid preparation of special formats (e.g. bulk extract of JPEGs from multi-page PDF).
Much easier than Adobe Acrobat.
Searching for support information leaves an impression of a company which is unhelpful and even mean/sneaky at times. For example, I had to consider whether upgrading to v4 would be worth it over v3, but you only published comparison with v2. You advertised great improvement in OCR accuracy, reliability etc. I spend the money but the things that were rubbish before are still rubbish: it still crashes in the middle of marking up critical documents; it still makes STUPID mistakes every time I OCR.

Do you think Tungsten Power PDF delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Tungsten Power PDF's feature set?

Yes

Did Tungsten Power PDF live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Tungsten Power PDF go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Tungsten Power PDF again?

Yes

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)
Making documents searchable.
Extracting information from PDFs.
  • Assembling documents from multiple sources.
  • Making big documents searchable/compact.
  • Controlling the output format e.g. to flatten files, ensure compatibility with e.g. patent office requirements.
  • Extracting drawings in bulk e.g. for registered design filing.
  • Cropping and re-paginating in bulk.
  • Marking up documents for presentation/discussion.