PDFMarkz vs. PDF2ID: Comparison of
PDF to Adobe InDesign File Converters

Markzware shares with you excerpts from this article by Cameron Chapman on The Book Designer website. The article compares Markzware’s stand-alone PDF to InDesign file conversion application, PDFMarkz, to Recosoft’s PDF2ID plug-in:

Most of the time, you’ll be creating PDFs from InDesign files. But that doesn’t mean you’ll never have a need to do a PDF to InDesign conversion. And while creating a PDF is simple, getting that PDF back into InDesign can prove to be a little trickier.

You may be asking yourself why you’d ever need to convert a PDF to InDesign. There are a couple of reasons. Imagine that you’ve decided to release a second edition of a nonfiction book you wrote a few years ago. There have been important changes to the topic and you want to make sure your readers are getting accurate and up-to-date information.

You go to your harddrive to find the original manuscript so you can start making changes and realize it’s nowhere to be found. All you can find is your final PDF version that you used for ebook conversion or to send to your printer. While you can certainly convert that PDF into Word, if you have any special formatting it might become a nightmare to work with.

But converting the PDF into an InDesign file would preserve that special formatting and make it a lot easier to not only update the content, but make sure that your book’s style is consistent from one edition to the next (or change it around if you choose). You won’t have to deal with funky formatting of things like sidebars or having to remove headers and footers manually within the text.

So how do you actually convert a PDF back into an InDesign document? It’s easier than you might think thanks to [a Markzware app or a Recosoft plug-in] that can do the heavy lifting for you!

PDF to InDesign Conversion Application: PDFMarkz

In addition to supporting conversion from PDF to InDesign files, PDFMarkz also allows you to open editable PDF files in QuarkXPress and Affinity Publisher.

Start by previewing the PDF file in PDFMarkz. Then, with a single click you can open an editable version in Adobe InDesign, Affinity Publisher, or QuarkXPress. If you want to get more technical with it, you can even define your own applications to open the files with.

PDFMarkz offers automation options if you have a lot of PDF files to convert, or you can integrate it with your existing automation workflows. While there is [a] free trial version, you can submit a PDF file to the company for a sample conversion if you want to make sure it meets your needs…

Again, compared to spending hours of your own time copying and pasting from PDF files into InDesign and manually recreating all of the formatting, it’s a pretty good deal!

PDF to InDesign Conversion Plug-In: PDF2ID

PDF2ID makes it simple to convert your PDF to InDesign format in just a few steps. According to their website…

All you need to do is install the software and then open up InDesign. You’ll see a new menu item called “Recosoft” with an option to “Convert PDF/XPS file…” Select that and then find the PDF you want to convert.

You’ll then get a menu where you can select certain parameters for importing the PDF, including selecting specific pages to convert or whether you want to import blank pages in the PDF to blank pages in InDesign. Click OK when you’re ready to convert and voila! Your PDF is now an InDesign file…

Placing PDF Files in InDesign

What if you don’t necessarily need to convert a PDF file, but instead need to place it within an existing manuscript file in InDesign? Say, for example, that you have an important chart in PDF format that needs to appear within your book…

While it’s certainly easier and faster to work from your original manuscript or InDesign files, if all you have available is a PDF, then rest assured that you have options other than having to manually convert your files. Sometimes it’s worth spending a little money on the right tool over having to spend hours or days recreating files.

For more information on file converters, check out the following:

PDF & DTP Software For Creatives & Content Creators

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PDFMarkz vs. PDF2ID: Comparison of PDF to Adobe InDesign File Converters