Intelligent PDF Creation

very good
key review info
application features
  • You drag and drop the images on the program window.
  • (2 more, see all...)

There are many uses for Adobe PDF files since it is a format very familiar and often encountered by most users. From documentations to presentations or scanned photos grouped together, the range of utilizations is quite broad and one of the reasons is that the Portable Document Format allows you to pile up and join, in various forms, text and multimedia. Creating this type of files is not difficult and you'll find dozens of applications to help you build the PDFs you need. The difference is made in the majority of cases by the reliability of the software and the functions it has to offer.

If you don't need to carry out complex tasks that involve mixing several kinds of content you should be peeking at the freeware tools among which you'll undoubtedly find one to meet your requirements. In case you just have some digital images that have to be joined in a certain order there is a little utility that can get the job done fast and easy without a compromise in quality and without you having to pay a dime. It's called i2pdf and barely tips the scale at over 1 MB in archived format. Things will be looking bright right from the start as you'll notice that it doesn't require installation, all you need to do is unzip the files and you're good to go.

At first glance the interface is not too appealing visually because it primarily focuses on functionality rather than good looks. You'll be able to load the images you want to compile in a single PDF using the drag and drop operation and then it's time for customizing the processing options. In order to configure the arrangement of the pictures in the resulting document you can use the features that are available in the Files menu. Here you can find commands for selecting or deselecting the items from the list as well as for sorting them. Note that for moving the photos to the top or to the bottom you can use the controls from the menu that appears when you right-click the images.

The Options menu of gives you to possibility to set i2pdf as the topmost window and also to make the software remember its position on screen so the following time you open the program it will be placed exactly as it was the last time when you close it. There is to be found in this menu a very useful previewing function that will display a thumbnail of the currently selected picture in a separate tab. The last entry in this menu actually opens another area of the application where all the real goodies are: PDF Creation, Text, Thumbnail and General settings.

Using the functions under the first tab of the advanced options you'll be able to adjust the most notable features of the final product, namely its quality and size. Here you have the ''Image Processing'' section that will enable you to activate the JPG compression and alter it using a slider that moves unit by unit from 1 to 10 giving you a choice in low, medium or high values. If you opt not to activate this, the photos will be transformed into PNG format, superior in quality but claiming more space. Next you can define the resizing percentage relative to the original picture that ranges from 1 to 100. This is useful for reducing the overall size of the PDF document you want to create.

Another part of the same tab is dedicated to the configuration of the resulting page and how the Portable Document Format file will be loaded in a specialized reader. First off you can specify the orientation that can be either Landscape or Portrait. To pick the paper format you need to decide among A4, A3, US Letter and US Legal accompanied by a special style called ''Paperless''. The latter will eliminate any white borders and will let each page have its own dimensions prescribed by the actual image sizes. If you want to have any other type of dimension than the particular one just presented above, you'll be able to use two more functions, namely ''Enlarge to fit page if smaller'' and ''Keep original image aspect ratio''.

These features can make the photos larger in order to fill all the space on the page if they are smaller than the paper format, or preserve the aspect ratio and thusly avoid any distortions when the pictures' dimensions are increased. Finally, the ''Startup mode'' menu offers you the possibility to customize the way in which your PDF viewer application displays the document. The options here are to make the pages fit the program window, to have the reader show the entire width or the whole image and even run in full screen to resize the files to your desktop's resolution.

The second tab from the advanced options area of i2pdf hosts the text settings. From this section you'll be able to set the header and footer for each page that will contain the filename alone or the path and the filename altogether. The position of the text can be top or bottom while the available alignments are left, right and center with font sizes you can choose between 8 and 12. The ''Document Info'' subsection will allow you to input the author and title of the document that can be viewed when the properties of the PDF file are accessed. The ''Save this'' checkboxes are meant to be used in case you wish to store that information alongside the rest of the software settings so they will be automatically used the next time you launch the program.

Moving on to the next tab you can configure the thumbnails that accompany each picture listed in the application's main window. There are three fixed sizes from which you can pick one, but only when the photo list is empty, and two background colors - black and white. In case you activate the ''The thumbnail will be locked to the main window'' function, the small image will be attached to the main frame of i2pdf, but if you leave it unchecked you'll be able to freely move it around the desktop.

In the last area of the options menu you can select various functions like clearing or sorting the list after each file is dropped, showing the entire path in the list view or including it in the sorting criteria and many more. Now that you've customized all the settings it's time to build your PDF. The actual process takes a few seconds and leaves minimal traces on the system resources. For example, processing a batch of 279 files took under a minute and the usage of the 1.90 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor peaked at 26 with only 28 MB of RAM from the 2 GB available being used.


The Good

The main strong points of this utility reside in its processing speed and clever functions it brings to the table. It is rather light on CPU and memory while operating and another plus is the detailed help file that will explain everything to the less experienced users.

The Bad

The main drawback of this software is its dull interface. The fact that it is concentrated only on functionality has obviously taken its toll insofar as the appearance is concerned. There is also something missing at this time when it comes to sorting the items from the list. To be more precise it's the inability to move several items at once up and down.The user can only use the mouse to individually change the place of the images and this can be quite time consuming sometimes.

The Truth

All in all, i2pdf offers you all the options you'll need to create the photo PDFs you need fast and with the quality attributes you desire. Since it doesn't need to be installed, you can carry it around with your other portable apps and, to further add to the satisfaction, remember it's free!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

 

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This article is also availble in Spanish: La creación inteligente de PDF

user interface 3
features 5
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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