This post is sponsored by LightPDF. The product choices and opinions expressed in this article are from the sponsor and do not reflect the editorial direction of MakeUseOf or its staff.
Invented in 1992, the PDF was meant to revolutionize the way that we shared documents, and in many ways, succeeded. A file format that allows you to share documents with others without having to worry about any strange formatting errors or distortion has changed the way that we share documents, yet editing them continues to prove difficult.
That's where LightPDF comes in. This all-in-one PDF tool allows you to handle file conversion, PDF editing, file security, and much more. Recently, it's gotten even better.
What Is LightPDF?
The LightPDF team has been working for over seven years now in order to advance the field of PDF conversion, editing, and more. The intent behind this has been to make PDFs easier to use and share than ever before, and has resulted in the creation of the LightPDF of today, capable of handling file conversion, editing, compression, and more.
If any of these features sound like something that would alleviate the issues you may be having with PDFs or simply allow you to elevate your workload, then the best thing about LightPDF is that you can access it from your browser or download it entirely for free. There are some minor limitations to file sizes that will rarely be reached, but apart from this, you'll get access to all of LightPDF's features then and there.
To this end, and through the consistent improvement of the tool, the LightPDF team has finally integrated AI directly into LightPDF, making the already powerful all-in-one PDF tool even better. You can make the most out of AI using the following LightPDF features.
LightPDF's Expansive AI Features LightPDF's ChatPDF Feature Complete With GPT-4
The ChatPDF feature allows you to upload your documents directly to LightPDF for a GPT-4 powered AI to analyze. All you have to do to get started with the bot is upload the file you want analyzed. You can even use a URL if you prefer.
Thanks to GPT-4, this AI assistant is capable of extracting and reading through any content that you upload quickly and efficiently. From there, it is able to provide you answers to any question that you might ask of it, complete with sources.
You can use this to quickly skim through dense documents without having to read them yourself fully, use the AI assistant as an aide when struggling through complicated legal documents, or make the most of it as a research assistant.
The AI assistant is capable of displaying answers in a variety of formats such as markdown or tables, as well as providing document outlines. The AI assistant even generates example questions to ask about the document that you can select, the ability to jump to the relevant part of a document when a source is listed, and in-built copying options.
Customizable Bot Creation and Tweaking
To make things even better, LightPDF's GPT-4 powered AI assistant can be further customized using LightPDF's bot creation tweaker. This is a set of options that you can access from within the document analyzer in order to change the way that the AI assistant interacts with you, the documents, and your questions.
In order to use the bot creation settings, all you have to do is click on the icon above the input box. This allows you to create new bots and switch between them as you need. There are three main parts to every bot that you create, the bot name, its intro, and its goals.
The bot name is how you will distinguish between the various bots that you create, with the intro and goals defining how it examines the document and responds. The intro covers what the bot is capable of, while its goals define how it interacts with you.
If all of that is a little confusing, then fret not. LightPDF also includes a one-click AI bot builder, which is capable of automatically filling out the intro and goals for you using the power of AI. This feature uses the name that you've inputted to determine the bot's intro and goals automatically.
Multi-Doc and Multi-Webpage Chats
To make the ChatPDF feature even more versatile, LightPDF also allows you to upload more than one file at a time to its AI assistant. You can do this using either scanned documents or web URLs without any complications.
All you have to do to make the most of this feature is upload as many documents as you need. From there, you can select the documents that you want to use as a multi-doc and choose to associate them.
From there on out, whatever AI assistant that you currently have set will automatically take into account the information from as many documents as you desire.
Plenty of Other Great Features
While these AI features push LightPDF over the top, there are a plethora of other features that are worth using as well. For example, LightPDF allows you to effortlessly convert a PDF into almost any kind of document that you might possibly need and also allows you to convert most documents into PDFs as well.
In addition, LightPDF makes editing PDFs an easy process, eliminating the typically tedious steps that are required in order to make small edits to a PDF. On top of this, you can use LightPDF in order to make the text in any PDF easy to select and copy thanks to its OCR feature.
This OCR feature will scan your PDF and automatically deduce what words have been written in them, allowing you to select and copy them in moments. LightPDF also allows you to effortlessly apply watermarks to PDFs in order to protect their contents when you are sharing them, and in the same vein comes with password-protecting and unlocking features to keep your PDFs safe.
You can also find PDF spliting and merging features if you have a collection of PDFs that you need organizing, as well as rotating and annotating features in order to make sure that you are getting the absolute most out of your PDFs.
On top of this, LightPDF even comes with a wide range of API and SDK support for any developers or power users who want to get the absolute most out of LightPDF by integrating the service directly into their own websites.
Get the Most Out of Your PDFs with LightPDF
As you can see, LightPDF supports a huge range of different features. So, whether you're looking for a new tool to help you be more productive with PDFs than ever before, or are looking for a replacement for your old software that just isn't cutting it anymore, then LightPDF is a great option regardless of your needs.
Better yet, LightPDF can be downloaded and used entirely for free, with most of its features being available from within your browser, making giving it a try quick and easy to see if you like it.
