PDF Architect

PDF Architect is a desktop PDF program for Windows built by pdfforge, the German developer behind the PDFCreator print driver. It works as a viewer for any PDF file and, depending on the edition in use, as an editor that can change text and images inside an existing document rather than only annotating it. The interface is organised around functional modules, so the feature set a given installation exposes depends on which tier is licensed.

The functional range covers the tasks that usually come up around office documents. Printable files can be turned into PDF, pages can be merged, reordered, rotated or removed, and finished documents can be exported to Word, Excel, HTML, plain text or image formats. Review features allow comments and markup for passing drafts around. Beyond that there are fillable forms, password protection and digital signatures, an OCR module that reads text out of scanned pages and can process batches, and an e-signature service for sending documents out for signing, which requires an account with the vendor.

The program is aimed at people in office and administrative roles who regularly receive PDFs they need to change, convert or have signed, and who want that on the desktop rather than through a web service. The free edition is a reasonable choice for anyone who only needs to read PDFs and do occasional page reshuffling.

It is less suitable if you need cross-platform availability, since this is a Windows-only desktop product, or if you are only after a lightweight reader, in which case a lot of the installed machinery goes unused. Prospective buyers should also check which tier contains the specific module they need, because features such as OCR and signing are gated behind the paid editions and the tier boundaries are not obvious from the product name alone.