Your complete guide to editing PDFs

PDFs are the top dog when it comes to official documentation. Invoices, CVs, reports, sheet music, beautifully-designed online magazines – the final product always comes in PDF format. Until recently, there remained one drawback: PDFs were difficult to edit, and could only be tackled with expensive software. 

Everything has changed.

There's been a proliferation of software that can be used to edit, annotate and reorder PDF documents. We're here to give you the run-down on how to use one of them: Lumin.

How to edit a PDF in Lumin

We get many requests about how exactly to edit a PDF within Google Drive. Here’s how you can do it in just a few simple steps:

Step 1. Open the Lumin app

Open up the Lumin web app. if you don't have an account you'll need to sign up, but don't worry – it's free! You can also use Google Drive to open a PDF in Lumin.

Step 2. Open your document

You'll see a toolbar offering an array of editing tools. You can try freehand drawing, highlighting, text insertion and commenting.

Step 3. Make your edits

Any changes you make will automatically be saved to Lumin, and can be synced to Google Drive. You can even turn on auto-sync if you plan on using Drive and Lumin together frequently.

Step 4. Save, download or share

You can save your edited PDF in Lumin or Google Drive as outlined above, or you can download it to your computer. You can also share files with friends or coworkers directly via Lumin, as well as by downloading and attaching to emails. If you give permission, those you share files with will be able to comment or even edit your document in real time.

You can also send your document straight to Lumin Sign for signature.

All the ways you can edit a PDF

The art of editing a PDF goes further than adding eSignatures and highlights.

• students can use software like Lumin to scan handwritten notes with OCR, allowing them to make scribbles digitized and searchable
• health and beauty industry professionals can create fillable forms for clients to fill out
• administrative personnel can use templates of commonly-used forms to tweak and send at will

No matter your goal, we have you covered.

Free PDF editing vs premium

PDF editors often ask you to choose between using a few basic features for free (like adding images, highlighting or merging PDFs together) or paying for the tools you actually need to level up your documents.

Lumin is different; we're dedicated to giving you an expansive list of functional features at an affordable price. Our free plan includes plenty of useful PDF editing tools, while the paid plans encompass the needs of more prolific users or businesses.

Why edit PDFs with Lumin?

It's not just about the tools. Lumin is designed for collaboration:

• invite unlimited team members into your Circle at no extra cost
• share documents with your entire team at the click of a button
• open files from Google Drive, Dropbox or Lumin's own centralized cloud storage
• access and edit your PDFs on any device: mobile, tablet or desktop

As a bonus, we have a dedicated and knowledgeable customer support team ready to help you.

Start your PDF editing on the right foot by working off one of our free templates: