Summary Table
| Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard | Foxit Phantom PDF Suite 2.0 | FreePDF 4.02 | PDFCreator 1.0.1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDF Printer | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Scan PDF | yes | yes | no | no |
| Encryption | yes (AES 256-bit) | yes (AES 256-bit) | yes (AES 128-bit) | no |
| Edit PDF | yes | yes | no | no |
| Create Forms | yes | yes | no | no |
| Merge several PDFs | yes | yes | yes (very slow) | no |
| Comment | yes | yes | no | no |
| Cost | $299 (Standard), $449 (Pro), $699 (Pro Extended) | $129 | Free | Free |
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So where is the page with the discription of PDFCreator 1.0.1?
It would be nice if you reviewed PDF printer drivers as well like Bullzip PDF Printer or CutePDF.
It appears that Foxit is treating all pictures in bitmap routines, causing the huge file sizes, while others rely on JPEG compression or other algorithms at one point or another, underneath the PDF conversion.
I did the test myself, "printing" straight from a JPG or BMP image to a PDF file. It appears, (at least in Bullzip, used by me) it can't tell one image format from another, thus reflecting on the size of the resulting PDF files. Apparently, any form of compression is not part of the Standard; so it is up to each tool (maker) to choose their appropriate image interpretation sub-routines, compression included. A further analysis should be able to certify my assumptions.
Haven't read the article so feel free to ignore me... But I used to work with PDF workflows and as far as I know comparison like this doesn't make much sense... Since if a product A - is "Press" oriented - it will generally speaking create a bigger file - due to the fact what PDF format can contain. It can contain fonts, bitmaps, subsets of fonts, clipart graphics (bitmap with few colours or b&w), vector graphics in different formats, colour profiles, bleed, print and crop areas for each individual page and so on... all of those are set using a "profiler" or "manager" app - using defaults is like comparing mediaplayer to vlc - which is faster and which is quicker at compressing videos? Well - it depends how it's configured.
Just my 2 cents.
my pc used to read pdf files but now doesnt. I'm a newbie and on entering a computing shop run by a friend of a friend i was offered a service for 65 euro . This is about what my pc is worth as its a good old P4 with half gig RAM running XP pro, I was told reverting to service pack 2 may help, but when i said the pdf was the only issue i was told 15 euro for this alone was the best i could get. hmm. will try a shop run by people i dont know next time.