Learn the Ins and Outs of PDFs

We are here to help you become a PDF expert. We want to provide you with the tools and skills you need to tackle PDF-related tasks with confidence and ease.

Tech corner

How to deal with poor PDF quality

"Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten", says a Gucci family slogan. Nevertheless, creators of PDF documents, private users up to large companies, regularly produce files with insufficient quality causi ...

Tech corner

Importing images into a PDF file - a seemingly trivial task

A picture is worth a thousand words. That's why they are fondly embedded in PDF files. One would expect that embedding images in a PDF file is a simple task. Because it seems so easy, there are also many, including free, ...

Tech corner

Does OCR make sense for digitally generated PDFs?

Scanned PDF files usually consist of one raster image for each page. The OCR engine can recognize the text in this image and make the document searchable. But what about digitally generated documents?

Tech corner

The Advantages of PDF/A-3 in Practice

PDF is a widely used digital document format for secure and easy access to documents. The latest version of the format, PDF/A-3, offers the added benefit of being able to store and archive files of any format, including ...

Tech corner

Electronic Signatures – A Crash Course

What is a reliable way to digitally sign documents? In this article, we'll explain the differences between electronic signatures and digital signatures, explore the types of signatures used in practice, and discuss the b ...

Tech corner

Can linearization be combined with digitial signatures and PDF/A conformance?

Linearization is a feature to optimize PDF files for sequential reading. Although it is very useful in web based applications it interferes with other features such as digital signatures.

Tech corner

Are the PDF/A space requirements a show stopper for archiving?

A PDF/A document requires that all resources such as fonts, color profiles, etc. must be embedded in the file. The archiving of transactional documents can be nightmare because such documents are usually short by nature ...

Tech corner

Scan to PDF/A - some insights

Traditionally a scanner produces a TIFF or JPEG image for each page. Some of them can directly produce PDF files. And newer devices produce files conforming to the PDF/A standard. However, the quality of the produced fil ...

Tech corner

Handling embedded and non-embedded fonts in PDF & PDF/A documents

Although the first part of the PDF/A standard was published in 2005 there is still a need for some clarifications regarding fonts and embedding. What does the standard exactly require? How should PDF to PDF/A converters ...

Tech corner

PDF 2.0 - A quick overview

It is rare for industrial products to survive for more than 20 years – especially in the IT industry. Not even the inventors of the PDF could have imagined just how successful their file format would be when they launche ...

Tech corner

PAdES - PDF Advanced Electronic Signature

What is PAdES? What does it have to do with PDF? What can PAdES do? For all these questions, there are detailed answers on the web. This article is meant to give a brief overview as a small guide in the jungle of terms.

Tech corner

Do the PDF scan conversion rules have an impact on anti-aliasing?

The scan conversion rules in PDF are special in the sense that none of the publically available graphics libraries implements them. On the other side almost every PDF rendering engine implements an anti-aliasing mechanis ...

Your head start into the world of PDF/Awesomeness

Stay up to date with our monthly newsletter! You‘ll be the first to know about PDF and PDF/A updates, as well as improvements for our tools.