New user and so far pretty happy

[advancedcskills]

Just thought I would reach out and let you know my experience so far.
Was using the Trial version but as my main working pdf editor I was using another's..
lets just say they start with N****pdf and are having major problems with the last few version releases.
And support is just not there in trying to fix this problem.

MS defender is being called on any printing using their pdf printer driver thus its slooooooow..
You have to go in and turn off defender to print anything to pdf.

And thats even if you can get the program to start as it hangs with not showing on any screen but still runs taking system resources.
thus you can open as many instances as you want but all of a sudden you will find your system at peak and maxing out.
Only a reboot fix's it..

Anyway after weeks of trying to help them debug with logs and back and forwards, support booked a net meeting this morning, and I pulled myself out of bed at 5.30am to do this at 6am..
but no show and no emails explaining why..

So after an hour I downloaded the new version of PDF-exchange and run it side by side and I can tell you hands down speed wise, PDF-exchange is killing them with the speed of large file creation.
(I write reports that include lots of photos, a MSDOC can end up being 500meg).

So, well done, I have been using PDF-exchange all morning and brought it by 8 am after my tests..
Look forward to it "JUST WORKING" and not dealing with the support that doesn't care if they fix a problem or not.
Thier loss and your win..
Shame I can't post into their forums to all the others having the problems and tell them to jump ship..

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Welcome to the Tracker forums and thanks for the kind words. I would that it were under happier conditions, in that I am sorry to hear it was misfortune that brings you here, it's great to have you here none the less.

As a matter of interest, how are your creating your documents? Do you use source files with existing content? Are you creating content directly as one might in a word processor? Something else?

Paul

[advancedcskills]

A good question and I will try to provide as much detail as possible.
Work in the education and the private assessment sector.
Work off a 3 screen setup, i7 6700 laptop with 24g memory. SSD internals with a Synology NAS DS1813+ to do a bit of heavy lifting on storage of resource files.

So there are a few scenario's that are daily requirements.

1: Assessment reports:

• These are 45-70 page MSword Template documents (created in-house, each page is watermarked and branded) that end up carrying 80 photos of clients work and a range of documents they have produced.
  Photos can be inserted via a few different ways, just depends on the timing of doing the reports.
  MS-screen snaps, direct copy and paste (using Irfanview 64bit), I do try to use a bulk photo resizer (Faststone)
  Documents - convert to PDF's, essential that the pdf program has a bulk convert option for MS documents as one report can contain up to 200-300 documents... I only need to screen snap front page of a few pages within the documents to load into the reports. --- PDF-exchange snap shoot tool, used extensively

It would be nice to be able to educate others on how to make small MS- documents but our MSword templates are 25meg before we start writing into them
I have been through the process of stripping them back, but MS is a hog..

2: Marking:
300-page assessments to be marked, can contain students diagrams and photos, usually come in as word documents, conversion to pdf's and using the "Stamp" tools. setup stamps for different comments.

3: Marking 2: smaller online assessments, marked commented and reloaded into LMS.

4: Online learning systems: Creation of materials to be loaded and streamed live. (Loving HTML5)..
General info on this..
H5p - https://h5p.org/ the future of LMS course activity creation.
Moodle - Embedding PDFs in book module? https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=318224
Best "How to compress a PDF" https://smallpdf.com/compress-pdf
On this.. I havent played with PDF-Xchange enough yet to test just how small I can get one.. but the link above is a life saver and does the job well. whatever they strip out beats hands down any on the pdf creation tools I have used so far..

5: Presentations in lectures - the ability to flick out to pdf's onto big screens in a lecture hall.. the pdf program has to render text clearly.
As a dig to the recent defection, I just did.... nothing worse than standing in front of 30-40 students and having the pdf program not loading..
it will take up resources and using task manager you can see it's sitting there.. but not loading to any screen.. only a reboot will fix this..
So far, no such problems with pdf-xchange... just works.. as it should.

6: pdf printing - Speed!!!!!!!!!!!! if you have the system and the resources then big documents should fly through the pdf creation process.
time is precious and every second I have to sit in front of a screen and wait for a program to do its thing is time wasted.
As pointed out, unnamed program is having problems with Anitimalware Service Executable - kicking in at about 18% CPU. (Win10 Defender), slowing down the print to pdf to a crawl.
No such problem with pdf-xchange

7: Rendering in viewers - Also, my go to split screen explorer - xplorer2 - http://zabkat.com

Food for thought, hope it helps.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello advancedcskillcs,

I've been reading through your last post and a thought came to my mind - why don't you try the PDF Tools to batch convert the documents - should be a great time saver for you

Cheers,
Alex

[advancedcskills]

Hello advancedcskillcs,

I've been reading through your last post and a thought came to my mind - why don't you try the PDF Tools to batch convert the documents - should be a great time saver for you

Cheers,
Alex

Alex,
Just explore these tools now, thanks for heads up..
Been using a "right click Menu option" from N's but as this is now not the daily driver I just got to get used to using these tools.

For Client security on sensitive information and uncontrolled documents, I only ever submit pdf versions of evidence collected.
so these tools are perfect.

Edits:
Just found out that it works perfectly within Xplorer2, the attached Screen snap shows it working in Native format with the snapshoot tool at my finger tips..

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello advancedcskillcs,

Our PDF Tools are mainly used for batch processing and automating things and also give a possibility to create your own tools. Do experiment with them - if you have any questions we will be happy to advice.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools

As for the snapshot tool, we are planning to modify it to select objects on page (by clicking on it) as well as the whole page, though probably this won't be useful for you. Also we will add some export features to it.

Feel free to give your ideas, so that we can make our software better

Cheers,
Alex

[advancedcskills]

I will keep my questions in this one thread for reference by others as I am sure that some will learn by it.

Stamps for marking large assignments.
Have created a new Stamp.
Called "REVIEWED" USING GIMP.
It has imported fine but size is a bit off..

I can use the resize tool once it is brought into the pdf.. that is working fine.
so the outcome would be to:

1: have the correct sizing so the I can power through and stamp 200-300+ questions as REVIEWED or DISCUSSED
2: Be able to resize it within the document then copy and past it 200+ times across the answered questions.

but, tested and I can't copy and paste it .. I have also flattened the page (comfortable with working in layers with adobe) and tied but no show.
I then had a look at creating text and copy and past it, but also not an overlay paste.

Is there a chance to request a stamp that can be imported?
This is the one I created with your program.


this is the usual use I need them for and created this with "N*pdf)
Note-if you haven't already downloaded a trial and have a look at how they are doing their stamps, as it is pretty quick and easy to setup.


Been to the help pages and had a read but didn't figure it out..

Edit: Have dropped Image size down to W72xH18 Pixels with resolution@ 150p (I was thinking to keep it from becoming pixelated) Seems to be ok size now..
Now that I have the format I can drum up the "Discussed" stamp..

Eraser Tool - It might be me thinking that it can do it.. but if I have dropped a stamp in, I am playing with the Eraser tool to wipe it out, but it doesn't seem to do this.
Am I right in thinking that this tool is limited only to erasing lines you have drawn in?
The Eraser tool is also another one we use a lot if we are to show sensitive documents that need to have data blocked out, understand this can be done with using the snapshot tool and snapping a white area then sizing this over. But the ability to just highlighted an area and have it whited out is a good one.

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hello,

Did you read the following information:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... Stamp-Tool

I tried it out - following the instructions for PDF-XChange Editor - and had no problem at all.

Be sure to use an image-format that allows transparent background.

The new stamp file (*.pdf) is normally stored in the following location:
C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Stamps

Regards.

[advancedcskills]

Hello,

Did you read the following information:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... Stamp-Tool

I tried it out - following the instructions for PDF-XChange Editor - and had no problem at all.

Be sure to use an image-format that allows transparent background.

The new stamp file (*.pdf) is normally stored in the following location:
C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Stamps

Regards.

Willy,
thanks for that, booked marked.. and yes went into the help menu to have a read before I had a play.

Now that I have got a few versions of "REVIEWED" that file has been created, as looked in there before I had created a stamp.
Its just going to take a bit of time to get the right resolution setup as a template and once I have it then the words and colours and be changed at will.

I have edited the post to reflect my playing with the Eraser tool.. if you have any tips on that I would love to hear about them.
As its a crash course into PDF-exchange as I sit here and write up a client report.
All good .. will get it moulded soon enough so all of this becomes 2nd nature.
thanks for the tips.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

The Eraser tool is also another one we use a lot if we are to show sensitive documents that need to have data blocked out, understand this can be done with using the snapshot tool and snapping a white area then sizing this over. But the ability to just highlighted an area and have it whited out is a good one.

This can be done by the redaction tool - first you will have to add the redaction annotations where the sensitive information is and then apply it, so that information will be removed.

Cheers,
Alex

[advancedcskills]

The Eraser tool is also another one we use a lot if we are to show sensitive documents that need to have data blocked out, understand this can be done with using the snapshot tool and snapping a white area then sizing this over. But the ability to just highlighted an area and have it whited out is a good one.

This can be done by the redaction tool - first you will have to add the redaction annotations where the sensitive information is and then apply it, so that information will be removed.

Cheers,
Alex

Alex,
Got it thanks.. just had a play and read..
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe6/

Document --- redaction -- Mark -- apply
Works well..
Simple once found

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]