
Welcome to PDFpen 13
What’s New in PDFpen and PDFpenPro 13?
Here are the highlights:
- New intuitive UI design:
- Updated Toolbar adds essential markup tools
- Editing Bar adds font section and accessible color controls
- Sidebar improvements
- Modernized icons
- Enhanced Highlighting experience
- MRC compression customization
- Table of Contents improvements (Advanced feature in PDFpenPro): Ability to reassign entries
- Revamped online User Guide

New Intuitive UI Design
PDFpen’s UI has been thoughtfully re-designed and modernized, inspired by best-in-class editing applications. We’ve kept the interface familiar while refining and simplifying access to important tools and their properties, among many other enhancements. The overall app experience is much easier and more enjoyable, helping users feel instantly at home.
The Toolbar is the primary destination for essential, most frequently used tools. We’ve reorganized the toolbar with this in mind. Basic markup tools are now available at your fingertips. Click the down arrow next to each button, such as Highlight, Annotate, Form*, or Draw and select your desired tool. Keep any Annotate, Form, or Draw tool consistently in use by double-clicking on the selected tool.
*Only in PDFpenPro
Specialized and action-oriented tools are located here. Font settings, formerly found in the Font Bar, are now conveniently located in the Editing bar for rapid access to properties. Adjust font type, size, style as well as color directly in the font section. Object Properties — such as stroke and fill color controls — are clearly defined so you can select properties for your text annotations, lines, and shapes without confusion. The Editing bar updates based on the objects currently selected for editing.
The Sidebar button toggles. To hide the sidebar, click on the Sidebar button. The canvas will seamlessly grow and shrink accordingly. Highlight colors are also visible in the Annotations view along with other annotations.
Icons are important for easy navigation and interaction. All icons are updated to provide a cleaner, fresher, and user-friendly look and feel for a more streamlined experience.
Love highlighting? Take control of highlighting with the refreshed Highlight tool. The highlight icon reflects the currently chosen color. Switch seamlessly between colors. Edit custom colors directly from the Highlight button.
We’re always seeking ways to accommodate your specific needs through customization. By popular request, adjust MRC compression in Preferences. Select from a range of MRC compression levels–None, Best Compression, Better Compression, Balanced, Better Quality, Best Quality–suitable for your particular scanned document.

Step by Step
- Download PDFpen 13 or PDFpenPro 13
- Launch version 13. It will notice your previous version and offer to check for a free upgrade.
- If your upgrade is…
- Free* – you’ll be prompted to enter your name and email address to get a version 13 license. Finished!
- Not Free – you can click on “Buy an upgrade license” for upgrade pricing.
- Go through the screens to purchase the US** $35 single user upgrade to PDFpen 13, or the $50 single user upgrade to PDFpenPro 13 from PDFpen.
- Complete your purchase and PDFpen/PDFpenPro will register with your new license.
* Free: If you purchased PDFpen / PDFpenPro, version 12 or earlier, after January 1, 2021, you can upgrade to the latest version at no charge. Start by downloading PDFpen 13 or PDFpenPro 13, which will handle your free upgrade.
** Prices are in USD. Listed prices exclude any applicable sales tax or VAT and currency conversion based upon your location in effect at the time of sale.