Prefer PDF Expert but Using PDFPen Pro-Amended

It looks like I need to take a closer look at the app.

Quick question, I see that they have an iPad version that will scan and OCR documents. I have that ability with ScanBot. What I’m missing the ability to open an image in Mail on the iPad directly into the PDF app and have it OCR it when opened. I can’t quite figure out if their iOS/iPadOS app will do this. Do you happen to know?

Thanks for the additional information! Much appreciated.

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You can long press the image and share it to Prizmo. However, currently I think there’s a bug in iOS that doesn’t recognise jpeg, png, and etc as “images”, but only “files”. So the correct apps don’t appear when sharing jpeg, and png. The correct apps only appear when sharing from Photos app.

The workaround is to use Shortcuts to force open in a particular app. Here is a shorcut I made to force open in Prizmo.

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Please indulge one clarification. :slight_smile: Once in Prizmo on the iPad, does the iPad app OCR the file?

Yes. My experience has actually been mainly the iPad app.

Thanks for indulging my questions. This sounds promising. I owe you one.

I was playing with PDF hacking yesterday and discovered that PDF Pen does a much better job of text selection than Preview. It’s as if it attempts to sequence the text fragments according to position on the page.

I’m wondering if PDF Expert is so good.

(Like browsers, I like to keep a stable of PDF readers / editors around.)

And, as for more serious hacking, experiments with BBEdit suggest it’s easy to colour text - with rg - and change text - with Tj. As I said above, I may be some time. :slight_smile:

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Is it live? Or is this a Closed Beta? I couldn’t see this update either on App Store nor their own website.

I don’t see the subscription within the app as shown in the screenshot, but if you go to the PDFexpert website and click ‘buy now’ you are directed to puchase a subscription.

If you download from the PDF Expert website, this is the version that installs (at least it was for me!)

Is anyone inspired to try liquid text? I really like the way that app rethinks PDFs.

I use Liquid Text alongside PDFpen. Liquid Text for examining research papers and interviews, and PDFpen for signing and processing PDFs.

I couldn’t live without Liquid Text, it is indispensable for my workflow as I have to do a lot of analysis while writing academic papers. It’s also great for showing research findings to other people, especially when screen sharing over Zoom.

I LOVE Liquid Text… helped me put together a major legal paper/argument over the summer…

I tried to give it a chacne in my academic workpaper workflow but found it a real PITA to try to use. Very confusing, not at all intuitive and the whole system grated on my with things never beenign the first, second or even third place I would try. I did watch some videos on ti and read a lot of the documentation and decided it was somehting that only works well for some people and that I am not one of them. The entire design went contrary to how I think.

@MacSparky The comments shared by you and others have caused me to give Liquid Text a thorough test drive.

I found this video, which may be a help to others trying to get their head around LT:

https://youtu.be/JhV2IoXmn-Y

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Just to clarify, are people using these pdf apps on Mac or iPad?

My understanding is both.

I primarily use PDF Expert on my iMac and that is where I do all my OCR work.

I use primarily Highlights on my iPad and that is where I do all my annotations.

But I am not trying to use the iPad or iPhone as a primary scanner of any sort.

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Well, it looks like I’ll have to revert back to PDF Expert and use DEVONThink or my scanner when I need to OCR a non-OCRed PDF received digitally. I tried multiple times to fill in a Bill of Sale PDF using PDFPen on the iPad and it constantly crashed. I used PDF Expert and it worked perfectly. Go figure …

Using PDF Expert and liking it so far. As for Liquid Text, it’s nice ideal but cumbersome to use when have a number of PDF. Having to import & export is PITA. Also paid for Margin Notes and Flexcil (doesn’t have Mac version) - each has their pros & cons. DEVONthink and PDF Expert together work best for me using lots of folders, PDF, links, etc.

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I agree with all of your comments. I spent time trying and watching videos on Liquid Text and MarginNotes. They have their strengths and weaknesses but the biggest for both is that they have too much that has to be kept within their frameworks.