What is PDF Document?

About - PDF File

PDF is a Portable Document Format, which captured all printed documents in an electronic image that can be easily viewed to someone else. It is not only containing the images and text but also consists hyperlinks, interactive buttons, embedded fonts, video, and much more. However, it is useful to read documents independently of all computing resources like the hardware, software as well as the Operating System. In the following segment, we are going to discuss What is PDF document, many advantages of PDF file and its multiple types also.

Advantages of Using PDF Format File

There are numerous advantages of PDF document those are given below:

• Graphical Integrity : The PDF file shows the exact layout and the important content but no matter which device, hardware or software application is displayed on it. It can preserve the original formatting, which is easily shareable and helps to achieve the same appearace on any device.
• Overall Convenient : With Acrobat Reader, the users are capable to create, view and utilize all documents by everyone. PDF documents allow to print or save multiple files and freely viewable among the various platforms.
• Secure & Safe Document : The PDF file offers the option to set up multiple levels of access to protect the complete data and document, such as passwords, watermarks, or digital signatures.
• Data Compact : Although PDF files can always contain the unlimited amount of data information. Also, such files can be compressed to share while maintaining the full control over the image quality.
• Multi-Dimensional : The PDF file allows the users to integrate different types of content like text, hyperlinks, images and vector graphics, audio files, videos, animations, interactive fields, 3D models, and buttons. All these elements can be merged into the same PDF document and well organized a report, portfolio or presentation.

Disadvantages of PDF Document

• The main goal of PDF file is to protect the content as well as layout of the entire document without knowing the computer program. That's why PDF files are difficult to edit and sometimes extracting some information from them is a difficult task.
• All PDFs are not the same whenever it comes to work with them. Multiple PDF documents require several ways of working with them, for e.g. while searching or extracting desired information.

Different Types of PDF Files

Portable documents are categorized into three different types as discussed below:

• Create Digital Copies of PDF : Digitally created document is also known as 'true PDF file' created by Microsoft Word Excel within the virtual printer. It contains recognized text and images as well. Both characters used in text and metadata have the electronic character designation. The pictures in digitally created files can be moved, resized, or deleted too.
• Scanned or Image-only PDF : While scanning hard copy on the Office scanners, or when moving an image, .jpg, .tiff or any screenshot into PDF document, the content is captured in an image form. Such scanned PDFs contain only images of the page, without using the text layer. So, image-only PDF documents are not searchable, and the text message cannot be changed or marked up.
• Searchable PDF Documents : Basically, the Searchable PDF file using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to scan the documents or other image-based files. During character recognition, the structure of the document has to be analyzed and viewed. Text message in searchable PDF files can be copied, selected, and marked up.

Final Thoughts

PDF is a portable file format which allows an easy incorporation of text, images, hyperlinks, etc. Apart from this, after understanding the various aspects of PDF file, we have explained the complete information to let the users understand what is PDF document and its specifications. Also, we have discussed its type, advantages and disadvantages as well.