Document Cloud is based on three simple premises: the ability to electronically sign and create PDFs on a mobile device, accessing and sharing documents across mobile and desktop environments, and restricting access to cloud-based documents.
To create a PDF from an image, I simply took a photo of my daughter's car seat instruction sheet within the Document Cloud's Image to PDF tool on my iPhone. Once the image was snapped, it began converting to PDF. The conversion process took about two minutes, which will likely be an annoyance for users who are uploading multiple receipts as separate files for expense reports, or anyone performing similar repetitive tasks.
Once the image was done converting, I saved it to the Document Cloud so that I could edit it on my desktop and tablet. Saving the document from my phone to the Document Cloud took less than 10 seconds. The document appeared within my Document Cloud document feed without having to refresh. You can then send a link to the document to anyone, just like you would with Google Drive or Dropbox.
Note: you will not be able to make wholesale edits on PDFs on smartphones. This kind of sucks, but I assume it will be remedied in future versions of the software.
Upon opening the document on my MacBook Pro, I was immediately prompted to adjust the borders of the image to fit a more standard document format, then I was told to click "enhanced image."
Because I took an image off of a phone, my document wasn't as high resolution as it would have been had I tried to create a PDF on the phone based on a document I'd scanned using an actual scanner. In addition to the resolution issues, there was some burn and shadowing around the edges of the newly created PDF that I needed to edit out by adjusting the enhancement level.
In order to make edits that look organic, Adobe was able to read my document and create a font that matched the font on the image. As you can see in the image below, I used a non-standard font and color, and Adobe was able to replicate the font. Unfortunately, because the document was scanned in low resolution, there are alignment issues. The text is somewhat crooked and curves upward around the edges.
So don't expect to produce images that are of perfect quality off of your phone. This tool should be used as a quick fix for rapidly submitting documents that need to be processed immediately. If you're on the go and you need to submit expenses and you don't have a scanner, the tool will let you edit, adjust and write notes on receipts that you collect while on your trip.
Once a signature has been added and saved to a document it is difficult to edit. You have to make sure the signature is in the right place and is the right size when you first drop it in. This is especially true on the mobile app, where I found it nearly impossible to move or resize my signature once I'd placed it onto a document. Notes, drawings and comments are much more easily remedied on mobile and desktop.
Adding notes to a document is as simple as clicking on a dialogue box and typing in text. However, the note-added indicator is so small that iPhone viewers might miss it as they are browsing through documents. Adding text is equally simple. Unfortunately, text appears in bright blue font, so you will have to manually adjust it to fit the typical black font that appears on legal documents. Drawing over documents is really simple. Like the signature, you can adjust the font, thickness and opacity. Unfortunately, the drawing appears in bright red so you'll have to adjust this as well, unless you're grading someone's homework.
The search function within the document makes looking within PDFs so much easier than it would have been if I'd just opened the document within iOS. Like most desktop search functions, you can simply click the hourglass, type in text and you're ready to explore. Unfortunately, unlike other tools' search functions, this one doesn't tell me how many instances are in the document. Nor is it able to search in the notes or signatures, so any information added that doesn't sit within the body of the PDF won't be searchable.
One feature that I really enjoyed was the ability to share documents with and without comments editable. Flattened Copies of documents lets viewers see the comments, but they can't make edits. So your word is final once you've added your input. You can also share the document so that select viewers can't see comments at all, which is quite handy.
The Document Cloud's Measurement tool easily allows you to determine the height and width of two previously marked points. This feature is excellent for scaling on maps or creating powerpoint presentations that require precise modeling. You can also create triangles to determine the area between multiple points, which would have helped me pass high school geometry in fewer than three tries.
Like most document software, you can secure your PDFs by restricting editing. This enables you to create a password that limits who can open and edit the document.
Once you've edited your image, added text and signed the document, you can also do cool things like add check boxes, add a box where you can give readers choices (such as keep, delete, edit). You can add a dropdown list, add a signature request, and even a barcode field that encodes data added to the document. You can combine documents to create a single PDF of images, PDFs and Word docs, among other file formats.
The redaction tool lets you pretend you're in the CIA. You can select text, or search for text that you want to cover up, and the tool creates a black box that can't be undone by future readers or editors.