What does "not an editor" mean???

[jampff]

I am frustrated, as many other Acrobat posters seem to have been in the past, judging from my search results.

I'm trying to simply add an image to my PDF, and center it on the page. I've already done all the searches (Google/YouTube/this forum, etc), and discovered that even in 2024, the people who literally invented the PDF do not have a way, in their OG PDF app (Acrobat), to do this. Words fail me.

Every time I read a post in this forum about this issue, the reply that is marked "Correct Answer" usually says something along the lines of, "Acrobat is not intended to be an editor, so it can't do that."

I'm sorry, WHAT??

What exactly does this mean? If Acrobat is not a PDF editor, what is it? And what is an example of a real PDF editor?

The closest I get to centering: I can turn on grids, and I can make my image snap to the grid, but even that doesn't truly center the image.

I annotate PDFs on a daily basis in my work. I frequently need to hand write on them with my Surface Pen. Acrobat "technically" supports this, but the result is profoundly ugly and hard to manipulate. Also, adding images and being able to align them on the page is something I need to do regularly. These issues shouldn't make me as upset as they do, but so many times my progress has been halted because I cannot move forward in Acrobat without these features. I'm tired of paying for Acrobat and it can't even center an image.

I am using the free version of Drawboard PDF on a daily basis for the features I frequently need, while Acrobat, the first and foremost PDF app from the inventors of the PDF, languishes unused on my computer. Turns out, Drawboard CAN center an image... and snap it into place, IF I upgrade to it's paid app as well! I really do not want to pay for two PDF apps.

In my opinion, there is simply no excuse for Acrobat to not be able to do this. Any answer along the lines of "it's not an editor" is ridiculous and unacceptable. Yes it IS an editor. It is literally says that in the marketing: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat.html?msockid=36d041dabff16323110955a2be1f62f0 (look for everywhere on the screen you see the word EDIT, and what capabilities are advertised).

So can someone give an answer on this that actually makes sense and doesn't insult the reader's intelligence? Either how to center an image, OR, why is it not possible (for real, not because "it's not an editor" [eye roll]).

Thank you!

[gary_sc]

Hi, @jampff, first off, it sounds like you've done an impressive job working against a temendous challenge. 

Let me try and explain how Acrobat is not meant for extensive editing. Acrobat is a digital print, first and formost. Its strengths include that a PDF document can be opened on just about any platform and look like it's creator intended it appear. In addition, it can have fields that can be filled out, it can have regions for leaving signitures, and with long documents, you can split it into pieces, extract selected pages out of the original, and many other important functions.

The PDF format is so successful and so important for world digital activies, that Adobe GAVE UP the rights to the PDF format and it is now a world wide ISO standard. Any changes that are made in the PDF format have to be agreed upon by the ISO International Committee. That's big time. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and many other 3rd parties write code to read, and edit (to some limited degre), and some of them follow the ISO guidelines (and no, neither Apple or Microsoft do a great job of following those guidelines. They do OK, but not great).

Did you know you could write a book in Photoshop? I can't imagine anyone wanting to, but you could. After all, you can type, you have access to all the fonts on your computer, Tab features, Centering, Left and Right allign; all in all, it can do impressive layout. But, it would be sooooo much more work than using just about any other Adobe application outside of Illustrator. Just thing, no automatic page numbering, no word-wrap around objects and no word-wrap from page to page. That's just a few of the things you cannot do when writing a book in Word.

Many years ago I wrote a book, and at that time, I used Microsoft Word. It was horrible, but at that time (mid 80s), but it sorta worked. When it came time to write the next edition, I used FrameMaker for the Mac. It was amazing and fantastic. It was hard — my joke was that FrameMaker should be given away for free, but the manual was $900 — since it was impossible to figure out how else to use it. But I saved so much time becuase it was a proper page layout application. 

There are two primary writing applications: text-intensive applications like Word, or page layout applications like FrameMaker and InDesign. With the latter two you can have word-wrap around objects, consecutive page numbering, consecutive section numbering, consecutive figure numbering, etc. Yes, you can do some of that in Word, but also you can do that in Photoshop via manual setting for each one.

I'm sorry to belabor all this, but you spent a long time asking a very important valid question and I'm trying to give you the best explanation I can. The code for what can be done in a PDF is very focused and very limited. It's much better than what can be done using Whiteout on a Typewriter, but for best service, you should think of Whiteout functions when "editing" in Acrobat. 

Maybe sometime in the future, Acrobat will work just like Word or InDesign, with functionality of Photoshop and Illustrator. But I'm pretty sure that that program would be very slow, full of bugs, and a real pisser to use. But, if you want to see development, try using Acrobat 2 — that's what I started with. (LOL)

Anyhow, all this is to say that the BEST way to edit a PDF document is to open up the original application that made the document. If that is completely not possible, save the document into a Word document, fix all of the wierd formating things that will need to be fixed, do the editing you want/need, and then resave it into a new PDF.

I'm sorry this is not the answer you were hoping for.

[gary_sc]

Oh, one real quick extra statement: Believe it or not, all the marketing and advertisements that Adobe has is not always realistic.

[JR Boulay]

Acrobat is an old application in which certain functions are well hidden. Unfortunately, when it comes to development, marketing takes precedence over user-friendliness and logic.

To center an image bring up the ‘Prepare Form’ tools, select the image and right-click on it to display the context menu, or use the pane icons.

But don't be frightened, the ghost frame disappears as soon as the image is deselected.

[jane-e]

@jampff 

When I started using Acrobat with version 2, any kind of edit was completely impossible. Users kept clamoring and because Adobe cares they began to add editing capabilities over the years. It is still not a page layout application, so you will be working harder when you choose to treat it as such instead of using an application that is better suited for page layout. 

Until I read the excellent tip from JR to use the Prepare Form tool, I was going to suggest another workflow that we used to use in PageMaker.

• Add a ruler guide to the center of your page. If the width is 8.5", for instance, put the guide at 4.25.
• Select and drag the image. You will see resizing handles as shown in the screenshot from JR. Position the top center handle on the guide. Now the center of the image will be in the center of the page.

I like this method because you can see visually if it is still centered. You might combine it with the Prepare Form tool method.

If Rulers and Ruler Guides in Acrobat are new to you, do this:

• To view rulers, select View menu > Show/Hide > Rulers & grids > Rulers
• To create a vertical guide, drag right from the vertical ruler or double-click on a location on the horizontal ruler.
  To create a horizontal guide, drag down from the horizontal ruler or double-click a location on the vertical ruler.
  

Details here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/grids-guides-measurements-pdfs.html

Jane

[gary_sc]

@jane-e When I first saw your statement, I was expecting something like ASCII art. (And then there's this guy in London who does it all on an old fashion typewriter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bqi2qY918M)

But Wow, using graphs to provide the color and everything, that's jaw-dropping. Thank you for that!

[jane-e]

That's incredible @gary_sc , thank you!

Jane

[jampff]

@JR Boulay Thank you, this looked promising! Unfortunately, the original PDF I am editing is sheet music. When I used the Prepare A Form option to open it, it added gibberish to all the notes all over the whole thing. Also, I could add an Image Field, and I could see the alignment options... but I could not figure out how to choose the image. This is not a very intuitive app. 😞

[JR Boulay]

"Did you know you could write a book in Photoshop? I can't imagine anyone wanting to, but you could. "

It's déjà vu, a client once asked me to make corrections and finalise the layout of a book he'd made using Photoshop. There were around 340 individual .PSD files to edit.
I sent him elsewhere. 😉

[gary_sc]

@JR Boulay, how funny. I was going to use the real example of a lady in Japan who wrote an entire book using Twitter, but since that was real, I thought of making up the concept of using PS. 

I guess that shows the range of folks who'd rather embrace the process rather than the result.

Thanks for your addition there.

[jane-e]

@gary_sc and @JR Boulay 

Did you also know that you can create works of art in Excel? Tatsuo Horiuchi from Japan is famous for it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-art-2014-6

Jane

[JR Boulay]

Yes, I already saw its paintings. 😉

[jampff]

@gary_sc @jane-e @JR Boulay Thank you all for your insight and willingness to help. Unfortunately, I still don't feel satisfied about Acrobat. Maybe some details will help:

I'm a private piano teacher who teaches exclusively online. My students (mostly kids) have printed music and worksheets at their home, and I have the digital versions that I screenshare. I write on the PDF onscreen with the Surface Pen so they know what to write at home with regular pencil. This is a workflow I use all day, every day.

So, my first frustration with Acrobat was trying to use it to annotate a PDF with handwriting. Technically, it's possible, but if you've ever tried it, you will instantly reject it as a viable option. Drawboard (and Xodo, which I used to use) let you just write on the screen. It's gorgeous, it flows, it actually looks like handwriting, and it's automatic as soon as the pen touches the screen. So from long ago Acrobat has already been irritating, and I've been questioning it's usefulness for a long time.

But what prompted this post was: I also compose music, and sell the printable sheet music. I create the actual notation in another app, which lets me write down the score and export a PDF... but the sheet music editor does not support adding images at all. Just the notes and a few preset text boxes with limited font options for titles, etc. So, I am trying to take the PDF from that app and edit it somewhere else to add a more attractive, graphical title image, a cover page, and some QR codes to the final printable (sellable) product. One of the replies above said the best way to format the PDF is to open the original app that created it and do it there. This is unfortunately not possible in this case.

I hear what you're all saying about Acrobat not being a "formatting" app... but this still doesn't satisfy me:

1) What exactly does Acrobat bring to the table that other apps don't? It seems to me like all the actions that are listed in the app are available in most other PDF apps as well, but the other apps do them better, it looks nicer, and it's easier to use... and there are more functions as well. So I keep hearing Acrobat isn't an editor... but what IS it then? Why do we need it? Is it really true that the OG PDF app, from the inventor of the PDF, is the most limited, confusing, and unneccesary PDF app out there?

2) Saying its formatting options are minimal still doesn't make sense. The ability to turn on gridlines, and snap items, including images to a grid, is in Acrobat. I can indeed do this with an image. This is both more complicated and less useful than simple alignment options. One would think that if the options were supposed to be limited, a simple centering button would be available, and the adjustable grid would be saved for more "complex" apps. (Besides, snapping to the grid still doesn't truly center the image unless you do a lot of manual measuring and math ahead of time to adjust the grid to the image size, for every single image... versus just clicking a "centering" button.)

I guess they never explicitly stated that images can be centered, but COME ON. You are not going to convince me that a simple centering button is some abnormally complex formatting option that doesn't belong in the app. And lots and lots and lots of other users think so as well... that why searching this forum for people frustrated that they can't simply center an image brings up so many hits going back YEARS. This is why comparisons to writing books in Photoshop, or artwork in Excel, don't resonate with me. I'm sorry, but centering an image is not some bizarre, outlandish feature. It's an absolute basic that definitely belongs in even the simplest PDF "editor", even one that isn't designed for heavy formatting. Especially if that "editor" will let me go as far as turning on gridlines to snap to. To the average user, centering an image is not "heavy formatting".

@gary_sc You even brought up Microsoft Word as an example of an app that isn't designed for page layout... and it definitely isn't designed for image manipulation! But sure enough, you can add an image, and center it on the page, with one click of the ever present center align button... because adding and image and centering it on the page are such basic functions that folks expect them even in apps that aren't designed for intense page design.

3) You have all acknowledged that marketing of Acrobat is not representative of the actual product. Funny, right after posting this last night, I saw the following app show up in my FB feed, for an app that is "not an editor": 

Also, in the app itself, where the actions are listed, this can be seen:

So, the ability to edit, even with images, is teased here. This is why so much consternation has arisen over the years, when a user inserts an image, and then naturally searches high, and low, and Google, and Youtube, and FB groups, and forums, for where the stinking "centering" button is. Because it is completely natural to expect it to be there.

Rationally, I can tell that I'm way overreacting to this. I'm just frustrated, because I've tried this off and on for YEARS. I still to this day cannot get it to work. This one silly function has literally brought multiple projects to a halt. I don't think I would be half as bugged, though, if it weren't for the deceptive marketing of the app and the steady stream of excuses made for it. And the realization that I'm just next in a crazy long line of people to complain about this makes me feel like Adobe doesn't care about its users.

I do not expect the app to change at all because of my simple complaint. If Adobe was listening they would have heard the last thousand ish people to say this. Whatever. That's life. After posting this last night, I decided to try adding the images to the sheet music in Adobe Express, which, surprise... does let me add images and center them intuitively (unlike the actual flagship Adobe PDF editing app). But Express also took all the fonts that were in the original sheet music PDF and replaced them with some random weird title font that is very hard to read at small sizes. But I've already asked for help with that elsewhere... and so far, the suggestions I'm getting don't work.

Sigh.

[jane-e]

@jampff 

While most of the Adobe forums now include bug reports and feature requests in this community forum, the Acrobat developers continue to use UserVoice. If you want the Acrobat developers to see and consider your request for centering an image, you need to submit your feature request here: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/

The three of us are users just like you. We can't change anything — we can only tell you how it works.

Jane