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Add to SafariWhen comparing Adobe Illustrator CC vs Adobe Acrobat, the Slant community recommends Adobe Acrobat for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF editors?” Adobe Acrobat is ranked 4th while Adobe Illustrator CC is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Adobe Acrobat is:
Since Adobe is the creator of the PDF standard, it stands to reason that Adobe's Acrobat Reader has the excellent support for it.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Amazing integration with all other Adobe Software (PS, Ae, Id...)
Pro It's the industry standard
Pro Advanced tools
Pro Has all the vector tools you could dream of
Pro Flexible, non-intrusive interface
Small palette menus and the ability to save multiple menu layouts keep the UI out of the way.
Pro There are many tutorials on the internet
Pro Frequent updates
The CC subscription model means that major releases are no longer necessary, so existing users gain immediate access to new features.
Pro Easy to learn
It's easy to learn how to work with this software.
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.
Pro Cross-platform
Available on Windows, OS X, iOS and Android.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Good OCR
Acrobat can recognize characters from both both scanned documents and photos of text. Even if the photos are at an angle.
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.
Pro Integrated cloud service
Gives access to a cloud service that allows storage and sharing of PDF files.
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.
Pro Desktop app supports electronic signatures
You can both sign as well as send PDFs for signature.
Pro Good annotation options
Acrobat allows commenting on text, highlighting text and leave audio messages.
Pro Video playback support
Flash and H.264 encoded video can be played back in a Adobe Reader.
Pro Allows comparing two separate PDF files for differences
Reader can compare two versions of a PDF file and highlight differences.
Pro Allows real-time collaboration
Since version 9, Reader supports real-time collaboration that synchronizes documents and includes chat.
Pro Touch-friendly interface for the desktop version
The interface has big enough button that they can be used on a tablet sized device.
Cons
Con Subscription model
Illustrator CC requires a $19.99/mo (minimum) subscription to use. Adobe no longer sells previous versions of Illustrator.
Con Heavy use of CPU/RAM
Con Steep learning curve
Con Very slow
Even in very good computers Illustrator is very slow.
Con You never truly own this software
As soon as you stop paying you to lose access to the software. This should be illegal.
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.
Con Imprecise coordinates
Oftentimes your 140 is 139.9997 and as a vector program it doesn't rely much on precision.
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.
Con Buggy
Software can be very buggy at times.
Con Crashes often
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.
Con No repsonisive usability
Con Outdated design
Con Subscription
You cannot use the version you paid before.
