Seven programs to mark up PDFs, from free built-in viewers to review tools, and the one thing most of them get wrong when the person commenting is your client
"Mark up a PDF" covers two things that want different tools.
The first is annotating a document for yourself or a colleague: highlighting a contract, scribbling on a brief, signing a form. Speed and keyboard shortcuts matter. Installing software is fine, because you will use it every day.
The second is getting feedback from someone who is not a designer and does not want to learn a program: a client looking at a brochure spread, a brand owner checking a packaging flat, a marketing manager with opinions about a poster. Here the whole job is making it easy for them. Every extra step between "here is the design" and "here is what I think" is a step where the feedback turns into an email instead.
Most roundups only cover the first job. This one covers both, because if you are a designer, the second one is where your afternoons go.
Already installed. Open the Markup toolbar and you have highlights, shapes, text boxes, a signature tool and sticky notes. It is fast, it saves annotations into the file, and for 90 percent of personal markup it is all you need. Its weakness is collaboration: there is no comment thread, no way to see who said what, and notes are easy to miss when the file goes to someone else.
The PDF viewer built into Edge has quietly become good. Highlight, draw, add text, and the annotations save back into the file. If you are on Windows and never opened Edge on purpose, try it before buying anything.
Reader covers comments, highlights and sticky notes, and its comment panel lists every note with the author's name. Pro adds editing, redaction, form building and the Share for Review flow, which collects comments from several people into one copy. Acrobat is the standard for a reason. The catch is that its standard is an office standard, and the comment list is built for lawyers and editors, not for pointing at a logo.
Fast, pleasant, and the best option if you annotate on an iPad with a pencil. Good for designers who want to mark up a printed proof by hand and send the scribbles back. Less good for collecting comments from several people, for the same reason as Preview.
Xodo, Smallpdf, PDF24 and similar run in a browser, so there is nothing to install. Handy when you are on someone else's machine. For a shared review they have the same limit as the rest: the annotations live in a copy of the file, and copies multiply.
Put a brochure spread through any of the programs above and send it to a client. Here is what happens.
The client opens the file in whatever they have, which might be a phone, a browser tab or an old copy of Reader. Some of the tools let them comment and some do not. If they can comment, the comments are saved into their copy of the file, which they email back, and now there are two files. If three people on the client's side comment, there are four files. Somebody has to merge the notes, and the note that says "move this up a bit" is a sticky icon in the margin with no clear target.
And the ones who could not work out how to comment do the sensible thing and write an email: "On the second page, the blue bit, could it be bigger?" Followed by a phone call about which blue bit.
None of this is the client's fault. They were handed a document format and asked to do a design review in it.
The approach that works is to stop sending the file and start sending a link.
A review tool loads the PDF in the browser, at full resolution, page by page. The client opens the link, clicks on the thing they mean, and types. The comment is pinned to that spot on that page, with their name, in a list you both see. Nobody downloads anything, nobody installs anything, and there is one copy of the feedback instead of four.
What to look for if you go this route:
Pastel, Markup.io and Filestage all do versions of this for PDFs. So does HopBack, which is ours.
Upload the PDF to HopBack and send the link. Your client sees the pages in their browser, clicks on the pixel they mean, and the carrot pin lands there with their comment. Multi-page PDFs keep their page numbers. Comments can carry an attachment up to 25 MB, so "a warmer green, like this" arrives with the like-this. When they are done they hit Finish review and choose Approve or Send feedback, and the round locks.
Round two is the revised PDF, uploaded to the same HopBack. Unresolved comments carry forward, resolved ones stay in round one, and Compare shows both versions side by side. The approval records a name and a time on the exact file.
On a Mac, Preview. On Windows, Microsoft Edge. Both are installed already, save annotations into the file, and cover highlights, shapes, text and notes. Acrobat Reader is free on both and adds a proper comment list.
Open it in Preview (Mac) or Edge (Windows), use the markup toolbar, and save. For comments from someone else, send them a review link rather than the file, so the comments land in one place.
Yes, if you send a review link rather than the file. The PDF opens in their browser and they comment by clicking on the page. In HopBack they do not need an account either.
Avoid sending the file. A review link gives everyone the same copy, so the comments are in one list with names attached, rather than spread across four returned attachments.
Yes. Brochures, menus, packaging flats and dielines are the files it was built for.
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