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What is the best alternative to Nuance Power PDF Advanced?
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PDFescape
All
5
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Easy, fast, and free
Very easy to use, with a simple interface.
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Con
Has ads
Displays advertisements (in a sidebar on the right - no popups etc).
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Pro
Fully usable before upgrading (upgrade has desktop version)
A lot of editing can be done on the free account, but you can upgrade to more features.
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Pro
Available online and works on all popular browsers
PDFescape is available online and works on Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Chrome, Opera 9.5+.
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Specs
Platforms:
Web, downloadable on upgrade
Exports:
.pdf
Imports:
.xls
Annotation:
Whiteout, Add Text/Images/Freehand/Link/Form Fields, Comment; Highlight; Markup
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3
0
Sumatra PDF
All
13
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Starts quickly
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Con
Windows only
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Pro
Free and open source
Sumatra is available for free, licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.
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Con
Lacking in features
Sumatra aims for simplicity at the expense of functionality. For example, there's no way to annotate PDFs or edit them.
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Pro
Low resource usage
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Con
Fonts are not smooth enough
Not as smooth as e.g. Adobe Reader. No anti-aliasing
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Pro
Does not have heavy editor features
Annotations and other heavy features are just not needed in reader.
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Con
Cannot crop empty fields
Just got used to this killing feature on Goodreader on Mac.
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Pro
Extensive keyboard shortcuts
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Pro
Elegant interface
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Pro
Portable
The application consists of a single file that can be run without installation. You can put it on an external device, such as an usb thumb stick and run it on any Windows machine from the thumb stick.
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Pro
Multilingual
It's available in 69 languages.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
GPL-3.0-only
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Experiences
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192
11
Foxit PhantomPDF Editor
All
11
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Fast and lightweight
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Con
Very frequent crashes
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Pro
Reasonable OCR capabilities
While PhatomPDF's OCR capabilities are not as powerful as those found in some competing products, it will get the job done as long as the layout elements are basic and the text has no particularly odd fonts.
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Con
Not the best for this price
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Pro
Clean, easy to navigate user interface
PhantomPDF has a ribbon-like interface that allows keeping it clean and intuitive.
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Con
Plugins are 32-bit only and don't work with 64-bit MS Office
Plugins for Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint that allow simplified PDF creation are only available for the 32-bit versions.
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Top
Pro
Can directly convert Outlook e-mails to PDFs
Single messages, conversations and folders can be converted.
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Pro
Offers a 30-day trial
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Pro
Supports password and certificate protection and DocuSign signatures
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Pro
Author of a document can allow others to leave comments
Through a feature called Shared Review, the author can share a document with others for them to leave comments. Once enabled for sharing through SharePoint, network folder or e-mail, the document can be accessed with Foxit Reader, MobilePDF Business and PhantomPDF Business.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Proprietary
Exports:
.doc; .docx; .xls; .xlsx; .ppt; .pptx; .rtf; .html
Real-time collaboration:
No
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Experiences
$99.99 - $129.99
52
9
Inkscape
All
29
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
15
Specs
Top
Pro
Free and open source
Inkscape is GPL-licensed and maintains public repositories.
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Top
Con
Very slow startup on some systems
Depending on factors like how many fonts you have installed, Inkscape can take upwards of 30 seconds to launch.
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Pro
Opens lots of file types
Inkscape supports many common formats for import (including SVG, Photoshop and Illustrator) and its plugin architecture allows more to be added.
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Con
Uses its own SVG-format by default
Inkscape might use SVG as its default format, however this SVG's contains some additional SodiPodi/Inkscape additions that can be troublesome if you want to import the SVG into some other application.
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Pro
Export to different file types
Files can be exported and saved as a "normal" svg, png, jpg, bmp etc. file.
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Con
1.0 is sluggish
Inkscape 1.0 uses GTK 3 which is sluggish and slow for low spec systems( eg. ARM, Celeron, Pentium, Core-i3, Ryzen 3 or Athlon ) compared to previous versions.
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Pro
Cross-platform
Pre-built binaries are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Inkscape can be built from source on additional platforms.
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Con
Buggy
Application is often buggy so it happens from time to time that the popup / right-click menu won't close and stays open. It crashes also sometimes randomly. This makes it almost unusable for productive / business use.
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Pro
Integrates well into a X11-System
Its uses the X11 icon theme and desktop theme(GTK).
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Con
Crashes very often
Inkscape encountered an internal error and will close now - is one of its standard messages.
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Pro
It can do anything
A very powerful software that can do pretty match anything!
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Con
Since 0.91 the gradient editor is gone
It is now only possible to edit a gradient on screen. but you can't set a stop to a specific percentage anymore.
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Top
Pro
Measurement Tool
This tool is extremely handy and can not be found in any other vector graphics programs out there.
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Con
Limited work with ICC CMYK color scheme
Support for ICC color profiles only in SVG files.
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Pro
Live Path Effects
Extremely powerful menu that offers more than 30 powerful Live Path Effects to apply to paths vastly enhancing the application functionality.
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Con
Uses GTK
It looks an feels like an alien. It also uses now touch-based widgets instead of professional widgets.
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Pro
Guides, Grids, and Canvas Rotation
Extremely handy features when building complex graphics using Inkscape.
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Con
Y-axis inverted
0,0 coordinates begin in lower left corner, not upper left corner as SVG standards define in Inkscape 0.92.x. It seems this is now fixed in the 1.0 beta 2 version of the program.
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Top
Pro
Dark Theme Support
The new 1.0 beta 2 version finally got support for dark theme which normally is only available for commercial software like Affinity Serif, Adobe Illustrator.
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Top
Con
A toy for facebook-ist enthusiasts, not for professionals
It's a Linux niche mumbo-jumbo, same as GIMP for raster edit .
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Pro
The new version 1.1 is looks and feels fantastic
Inskape got UI update: new dockable dialogs.
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Con
Based on the GTK widget toolkit
Software is based on GTK, so it might not integrate well in non-GTK environments. It also requires many dependencies on those non-GTK desktops. It also adds dependencies to GTK-environments since it is written in C++ which requires the gtkmm wrapper/interface.
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Pro
Interface is available in 29 languages
Basque, British English, Brazilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Norwegian (BokmĂ¥l), Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Swedish.
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Con
Mac version does not look as polished as its versions for Windows/Linux version for the 0.92.x version
It seems that Inkscape 1.0 beta 2 for Mac got some needed attention and it looks a lot better with dark theme support. native DMG installer and they got rid of X11 which is great.
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Pro
It's really easy and fun
Vector graphics can be created and edited with Inkscape.
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Con
Incompatible with previous versions
Sometimes backward compatibility breaks. For example, pre 0.92 SVGs are incompatible with later releases (due different default resolutions).
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Con
No support for large printing machine system
No support for large printing machine environment, except exporting the resulting artwork to PDF.
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Con
Under GNU GPL
It is released under GNU GPL which one of the restricted open source license.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, Unix
License:
GPL-2.0-or-later
Technology:
C++
Initial Release:
2003
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Experiences
Free
249
52
Nitro Pro
All
13
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Con
Pricey, bloated addvertising for nothing, frequent crashing
Nitro Pro is available for $140.
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Pro
Nitro Cloud simplifies sharing, collaboration and getting documents signed
Nitro offers a cloud-service, called Nitro Cloud. Nitro can upload a PDF to the Nitro Cloud and notify other people via email that they can either view or edit a PDF or have to sign a PDF. If they need to sign a document they will be able to do it from the interface that's provided by the Nitro Cloud.
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Top
Con
Difficult to register
Very buggy, no support.
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Pro
Clean, ribbon-like user interface
Nitro Pro has an interface that will be immediately familiar to anyone who's used Microsoft Office products.
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Top
Con
Incomplete MS Office document to PDF conversion
Some attributes, like form fields don't get converted.
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Top
Pro
Can directly convert Outlook e-mails to PDFs via a plugin
Single messages, conversations and folders can be converted.
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Pro
Good support for e-signatures
Nitro allows signing a document in three ways - using a webcam, writing it by hand or adding a signature from a file. It also allows you to send out files for signing via their cloud service, Nitro Cloud.
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Top
Pro
Reasonable OCR capabilities
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Pro
Super-simple MS Office file conversion
To convert an MS Office file to a PDF, simply drag and drop the file on the Nitro Pro shortcut.
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Pro
Allows combining PDFs
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Pro
Allows batch printing multiple files
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Pro
Offers a trial version
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Proprietary
Exports:
".doc; .docx; .xls; .xlsx
Real-time collaboration:
No
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Experiences
$159.99
15
5
Adobe Acrobat
All
22
Experiences
Pros
16
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Excellent compatibility with the PDF standard
Since Adobe is the creator of the PDF standard, it stands to reason that Adobe's Acrobat Reader has the excellent support for it.
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Con
Crashes often
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Pro
Cross-platform
Available on Windows, OS X, iOS and Android.
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Top
Con
Very expensive
While there's a free version of Acrobat Reader, it does not allow editing. There's a choice of Standard edition that costs $299, and Pro version for $499.
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Top
Pro
Allows converting MS Office documents to PDFs
You can use the create PDF tool to open any Office document and convert it to an editable PDF or if you're on Windows, you can access the same functionality in Office from the Acrobat tab.
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Top
Con
No repsonisive usability
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Pro
Clean interface
Acrobat has a three tab interface. There are home, tools and document tabs. The home tab has recently used files as well as files stored in Adobe's cloud services. It will be the first thing shown once you start the program. The tools tab includes access to all Acrobats functionality. From here you can add tabs to panels or use the search to look for tools.
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Con
Outdated design
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Pro
Acrobat can construct a font to match scanned content
Instead of simply trying to match the font to the closest available, Acrobat can attempt to construct a font based on other characters in the document.
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Con
Subscription
You cannot use the version you paid before.
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Pro
Search allows finding functionality
You don't have to look trough menus to find specific functionality, instead you can use search that's available in the sidebar and the tools tab to find the functionality you're looking for. You don't have to know the name of the tool either, related terms will work.
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Pro
Good OCR
Acrobat can recognize characters from both both scanned documents and photos of text. Even if the photos are at an angle.
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Pro
Can automatically detect form fields
Acrobat has a form wizard that will attempt to overlay appropriate form fields (single-line and multi-line text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.) over existing layouts.
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Pro
Integrated cloud service
Gives access to a cloud service that allows storage and sharing of PDF files.
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Pro
Allows getting notified when recipients view or download a file
You can use the document cloud to get a shareable link to any of your documents. And it's possible to get notified when a document cloud document gets viewed and/or downloaded.
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Pro
Desktop app supports electronic signatures
You can both sign as well as send PDFs for signature.
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Pro
Good annotation options
Acrobat allows commenting on text, highlighting text and leave audio messages.
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Pro
Video playback support
Flash and H.264 encoded video can be played back in a Adobe Reader.
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Pro
Allows comparing two separate PDF files for differences
Reader can compare two versions of a PDF file and highlight differences.
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Pro
Allows real-time collaboration
Since version 9, Reader supports real-time collaboration that synchronizes documents and includes chat.
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Pro
Touch-friendly interface for the desktop version
The interface has big enough button that they can be used on a tablet sized device.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS
License:
Proprietary
Exports:
.pdf, .ps, .eps, .html, .htm, .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jpf, .jpx, .jp2, .j2k, .j2c, .jpc.png, .pptx, .rtf, .txt, .tif, .tiff, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .xml, .csv
Real-time collaboration:
No
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Experiences
$299 - $499
28
15
Adobe Illustrator CC
All
18
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
9
Specs
Top
Con
Subscription model
Illustrator CC requires a $19.99/mo (minimum) subscription to use. Adobe no longer sells previous versions of Illustrator.
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Top
Pro
Amazing integration with all other Adobe Software (PS, Ae, Id...)
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Con
Heavy use of CPU/RAM
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Pro
It's the industry standard
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Con
Steep learning curve
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Pro
Advanced tools
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Con
Very slow
Even in very good computers Illustrator is very slow.
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Pro
Has all the vector tools you could dream of
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Con
You never truly own this software
As soon as you stop paying you to lose access to the software. This should be illegal.
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Pro
Flexible, non-intrusive interface
Small palette menus and the ability to save multiple menu layouts keep the UI out of the way.
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Con
Install useless and intrusive software
When you install any Adobe product it also installs lots of useless and intrusive software and services. It adds two services and up to three auto-starting software that runs when you start your operating system and keep running constantly. One is for auto-updating, others for "checking" if you are not a pirate and some others that seems to be just to collect information.
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Pro
There are many tutorials on the internet
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Con
Imprecise coordinates
Oftentimes your 140 is 139.9997 and as a vector program it doesn't rely much on precision.
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Pro
Frequent updates
The CC subscription model means that major releases are no longer necessary, so existing users gain immediate access to new features.
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Con
No proper selection mode
In a vector-art program, the critical selection mode is the one in which objects must be fully enclosed by the selection marquee to be selected. In the simple example shown here, selecting all the circles should merely require you to draw a selection rectangle around them. But in Illustrator, there's no way to avoid selecting other objects as well, even though they're not totally enclosed by the selection box. Year after year, Adobe fails to fix this bizarre oversight, making Illustrator a tedious pain to use.
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Pro
Easy to learn
It's easy to learn how to work with this software.
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Con
Buggy
Software can be very buggy at times.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows; Mac
License:
Proprietary
Initial Release:
1987
Exports:
.ai; .eps; .ait; .pdf; .fxg; .svgz; .svg; .png; .bmp; .dwg; .dxf; .emf; .swf; .jpg; .pct; .psd; .tif; .tga; .txt; .wmf; .html; .gif
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Experiences
$19.99+/mo
60
37
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