
Today, Acrobat is ahead on this front, as Adobe's product does let you add interactive elements like audio and video clips to PDF files. One thing Nitro Pro should incorporate in future versions is multimedia embeds. I was impressed by the speed with which I could edit images, combine multiple PDFs, convert PDFs to other formats, and perform other typical operations.

Plus, all of its tools work smoothly, without performance lags. It opens files significantly faster than other PDF programs, including Adobe Acrobat.

While it's true Nitro Pro comes filled to the brim with features, where it really excels is performance. The feature is enabled by default, and can be customized to back up your changes at different intervals. With it, you can rest assured that your work can be restored in the event of a system or program crash. Nitro Pro's Auto Recovery is another useful feature. To use it, just snap a photo of your signature and create a QuickSign profile within Nitro. It even password-protects your saved signatures so other users can't gain access. The Stamp Signature tool is convenient, as it captures, stores, and overlays your handwritten signature on PDF files. The flexibility that Nitro offers in converting PDFs to different file formats and back is unequaled and undoubtedly one of my favorite things about the program. For anyone who works with presentations often, this one-click converter is a godsend. With the latest patch to version 8.5 (included with a purchase of version 8), Nitro incorporated a nifty PDF-to-PowerPoint feature. And if you're converting PDF tables to Excel, Nitro lets you choose to export to a single worksheet or multiple worksheets, which is an improvement over previous versions.

If you're working with scanned images, Nitro can easily detect them, apply its OCR (optical character recognition) powers, and convert your images into searchable, fully editable Word or Excel documents. It works in just a few clicks, and allows you to convert batches of PDFs to Word or Excel files, images, or even plain text. Nitro's convert function is a huge selling point for the program.
