novaPDF Professional Review

Although there are plenty of solutions to turn your printable documents into PDF files, some software are better than others simply because of the options they make available. novaPDF Professional comes complete with features that allow not just to convert regular documents (images or texts) into PDF but also to customize the results by signing them or password protect them.

The range of features bundled in extends to compressing elements in the resulting PDF for a smaller size, or applying watermarks.

novaPDF Professional installs as a virtual printer and asks to be your default printing device. If you have Microsoft Office on your system, you can opt to add novaPDf plug-in to Office components such as Word, Excel, Publisher or PowerPoint. The application integrates perfectly in Microsoft's suite, being available in the menu bar.

Although this may seem redundant, since Office comes with inherent capabilities to save documents as PDF, novaPDF shows a wider range of options, allowing you control over page size, font embedding or filling in various information about the document.

Working with the application is not a complicated task, as the wizard-like interface provides easy-to-follow steps. The configuration options change depending on the type of file you load up.

In the case of images, you'll skip straight to the printing settings. These allow you to set up the paper size or quality of the result.



If you’re trying the software on a text document, the rack of options changes, novaPDF Professional offering a plethora of possibilities. The initial options allow you to merge the resulting file with another PDF (insert it at the beginning or at the end), or protect it with a password.

Under advanced configuration options, however, you'll find the possibility to modify document information. This refers to title, name of the author, keywords, name of the creator.

Also included in the set are viewing options for the PDF viewer. These let you set the start page, layout (single page, continuous, facing or continuous-facing) or page scaling and default magnification.

Moreover, if graphics are available in the document novaPDF makes available some tweaks designed to compress, downsample or convert text and images to reduce the size of the resulting PDF file. After conversion, the file can be delivered to an inbox of an email address you define.

As far as security options are concerned, novaPDF Professional makes available both low (40-bit) and high (128 bit) level encryption. The password (user and owner countersigns can be set) can protect different actions, such as changing content or extracting text and graphics.

Regardless of the way you start novaPDF, the same source is accessed and this means that you won't be able to handle other Office documents while the conversion window is opened. This should not be an inconvenience for the regular users, though.



Additional customization possibilities can be found in the configuration panel of the novaPDF component in Microsoft Office. Here you can choose to apply your signature to the documents (system certificate or local certificate file), enable automatic detection of links and bookmarks or conversion of file names to PDF links.

Document personalization options extend to watermarking, which can be either a text or an image. In both cases you can decide to print them on all pages, only on the first one, on odd/even ones or a specific range.

novaPDF Professional proves to be flexible enough with the watermarks as it lets you set the size, location in the page as well as transparency. Text-custom settings include style, font and color changing.

Overlay options are designed to let you plaster a PDF document onto an existing one. If the overlay file is shorter than the "host," there is the possibility to repeat it. Moreover, you can define it as a background as well as set it to a custom location.

Some tasks are repetitive and the developer of novaPDF Professional is well aware of this fact. As such, to make your task easier, there is the possibility to create profiles with predefined settings. Thus, you have the option to apply different settings for various documents by simply activating a predefined profile.

The rack of options available in the application is not aimed at the beginner user but the more experienced ones that require assistance in creating professional looking documents.



The Good

The application integrates perfectly in Microsoft Office suite and comes as an easy-to-use alternative to create PDF files from any sort of printable items.

Customization of the resulting PDF data includes plenty of options that are easy to use. Support for profiles allows you to create multiple presets and switch between them depending on the document you work on.

The Bad

Setting watermark position on the page is still pretty rough on the edges, as you have to define the values for the exact location. A better alternative would be to let you drag the item to the desired position.


The Truth

Some would call novaPDF Professional a Swiss army knife for PDF production, and they would not be far from the truth.

As there are Swiss army knives suitable for different tasks, so is novaPDF Professional suited for certain jobs regarding PDF creation, but not all of them. Overall, the application is intuitive and flexible enough to offer regular office users an easy way to create professional-looking PDF documents from any sort of printable files.