PDF format is a standard term used for Portable Documents Format. It’s a very popular format used to display electronic documents independent of any operating system, hardware or software it is being displayed on. Developed by Adobe Systems, PDF is a worldly-known most compatible format which is based on PostScript format. It is a standard universal de-facto to exchange electronic documents and information.
Adobe gave the control of PDF format to International Standardization Organization then PDF became an ‘Open Standard” format. PDF format has tons of benefits for users. Here are few:
Perfect Graphics
PDF format enables you to display exactly the same layout and content no matter on which device, system or operating system it is being displayed on.
- Convenient
PDF format is a pretty simple to use and operate. Using it doesn’t involve any difficult technical steps. Anyone can use it effortlessly. You can easily run it, create and read any PDF format file.
- Takes less of space
PDF format has an amazing capability to compress unlimited piece information into a compact file. That is why it is simple to convert any file into PDF format. In addition to that, the compactness of PDF file doesn’t compromise on the quality of entire content whether it contains images or any kind of content.
- Security
By using PDF you can set up different levels of security to get access to secure any selected content as well the entire document. For example like digital signatures, watermarks and passwords.
- Signature
This format also allows you to sign documents. If you want to add signature to your document, click here to sign documents online.
Types of PDF documents
The PDF documents can be classified into three main types looking at the way they have been created. It describes whether your required information can be accessed or not. Its pretty simple! Whether it could either be ‘accessed’ or ‘locked’.
- ‘True’ PDFs
The PDFs which are digitally created are recognized as a ‘true’ PDFs file. It means that ‘true’ PDF have been created by using MS. Office tools like Word or Excel, Access or any other office tool or through using ‘’print’. Both these two functions involve the electronic character recognition so these files could be easily edited if not ‘locked’. The digitally originated content can be moved, resized or deleted.
- ‘Scanned’ or ‘Image-Only’ PDFs
When we scan an image, a document, a TIF or a camera image to convert it into PDF, its content gets locked. So it becomes an ‘image-only’ or ‘scanned’ PDF which is non-searchable and the content become unable to edit. OCR option is used to search image –only PDFs.
- Searchable PDFs
Optical Recognition reader is used to scan PDFs other than ‘image-only’ documents. Searchable documents can be fully searched. You can easily select copy and mark the required content.
PDF has few limitations also:
It is hard to edit:
Since PDF format was developed to intact the layout, images and the content so it is pretty hard to edit the PDF converted documents. Even if you try, it’s hard to extract any information out of a PDF document.
ALL PDFs are not alike:
Every kind of PDF format is not alike when we work with them. Different kinds of PDF require different methods to work with. When you want to search or extract any required information, Different PDF formats allow different interfaces to let you perform your required task.
