Quickly compare two PDF files with the Adobe Acrobat DC redesigned file compare tool. Compare, summarize and visualize changes between documents. Quickly compare two PDF files with the Adobe Acrobat DC redesigned file compare tool. Compare, summarize and visualize changes between documents. For Windows and Mac. Compare two versions of a document Open one of the two versions of the document that you want to compare. On the Tools menu, point to Track Changes, and then click Compare Documents. To start comparing two PDF files, select two the documents by browsing to them from File 1 & File 2 buttons. Load them and click Compare.
Active6 years, 11 months ago
I need to compare large count of PDF files for it optical content. Because the PDF files was created on different platforms and with different versions of the software there are structural differences. For example:
Tools To Compare 2 Files
- the chunking of text can be different
- the write order can be different
- the position can be differ some pixels
It should compare the content like a human people and not the internal structure. I want test for regressions between different versions of the PDF generator that we used.
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closed as not constructive by Flexo♦, casperOneFeb 17 '12 at 19:46
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10 Answers
Because there is no such tool available that we have written one. You can download the i-net PDF content comparer and use it. I hope that help other with the same problem. If you have problems with it or you have feedback for us then you can contact our support.
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There is actually a diffpdf tool. https://cleverstone631.weebly.com/the-best-video-editing-tool-for-mac.html.
Its weakness is that it doesn't react well when additions make new text shift partially to a new page. For instance, if old page 4 should be compared to the end of page 5 and the beginning of page 6, you'll need to shift parameters to compare the two slices separately.
jabialjabial
Tools To Compare Pdfs
I've used a home-baked script which
- converts all pages on two PDFs to bitmaps
- colors pages of PDF 1 to red-on-white
- changes white to transparent on pages of PDF 2
- overlays each page from PDF 2 on top of the corresponding page from PDF 1
- runs conversion/coloring and overlaying in parallel on multiple cores
Software used:
- GhostScript for PDF-to-bitmap conversion
- ImageMagick for coloring, transparency and overlay
- inotify for synchronizing parallel processes
- any PNG-capable image viewer for reviewing the result
Pros:
- simple implementation
- all tools used are open source
- great for finding small differences in layout
Cons:
- the conversion is slow
- major differences between PDFs (e.g. pagination) result in a mess
- bitmaps are not zoomable
- only works well for black-and-white text and diagrams
- no easy-to-use GUI
I've been looking for a tool which would do the same on PDF/PostScript level.
Here's how our script invokes the utilities (note that ImageMagick uses GhostScript behind the scenes to do the PDF->PNG conversion):
akaiholaakaihola21.5k55 gold badges4949 silver badges6060 bronze badges
I don't seem to be able to see this here, so here it is: via superuser: How to compare the differences between two PDF files? (answer #229891, by @slestak), there is
(build steps for Ubuntu Natty can be found in get-diff-pdf.sh)
As far as I can see, it basically overlays the text/graphics of each page in the pdf(s), allowing you to easily see if there were any changes..
![Files Files](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133910064/197502879.jpg)
Cheers!
Community♦
sdaausdaau21.6k2828 gold badges158158 silver badges216216 bronze badges
We've also used pdftotext (see Sklivvz's answer) to generate ASCII versions of PDFs and wdiff to compare them.
Use pdftotext's
-layout
switch to enhance readability and get some idea of changes in the layout.To get nice colored output from wdiff, use this wrapper script:
akaiholaakaihola21.5k55 gold badges4949 silver badges6060 bronze badges
I think your best approach would be to convert the PDF to images at a decent resolution and than do an image compare.
To generate images from PDF you can use Adobe PDF Library or the solution suggested at Best way to convert pdf files to tiff files. Wp pen testing tools for mac.
To compare the generated TIFF files I found GNU tiffcmp (for windows part of GnuWin32 tiff) and tiffinfo did a good job. Use tiffcmp -l and count the number of lines of output to find any differences. If you are happy to have a small amount of content change (e.g. anti-aliasing differences) then use tiffinfo to count the total number of pixels and you can then generate a percentage difference value.
By the way for anyone doing simple PDF comparison where the structure hasn't changed it is possible to use command line diff and ignore certain patterns, e.g. with GNU diff 2.7:
Photo cropping tool edv for mac. This still has the problem that it doesn't always catch changes in generated font names.
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daniodanio5,42344 gold badges3333 silver badges5252 bronze badges
Our product, PDF Comparator - http://www.premediasystems.com/pdfc.html' - will do this quite elegantly and efficiently. It's also not free, and is a Mac OS X only application.
Peter TruskierPeter Truskier
Based on your needs, a convert to text solution would be the easiest and most direct. Landscape design tool for mac. I did think the bitmap idea was pretty cool.
user602475user602475
M JenkinsM Jenkins
You can batch compare pdf files with Tarkware Pdf Comparer. But it's not free and requires Adobe Acrobat.
erkserks