Adobe Acrobat and PDFs in the Modern Digital Workflow
“Just send me a PDF.” You’re hearing that phrase more and more these days, aren’t you? While creating PDFs isn’t exactly a no-brainer, it’s certainly easier than ever, thanks to the close integration of PDF with Creative Suite 2. Adobe PDFs are increasingly important in a wide range of industries, from office environments to the graphic arts. We’ve moved far beyond the original intention for PDF—a sort of “digital carbon copy”—to an accepted format for file submission and eBook distribution, the perfect tool for job markup and review, or a substrate for multimedia work.
PDF and Creative Suite 2
All CS2 programs can create PDFs without invoking Distiller; that is, you don’t have to own Acrobat to create PDFs from CS2 applications. That’s because each application has the ability to create PDFs, utilizing the built-in PDF Library. Does this mean that you don’t need Acrobat? Hardly! Acrobat itself is indispensable for en-hancing, modifying, and optimizing PDFs. There are some distinct advantages to the direct method of creating PDFs—such as retaining hyperlinks, bookmarks, and more.
Creative Suite 2 adds a major enhancement to PDF creation: Settings are now stored in a common reposi-tory, available to all CS2 applications, so there’s no need to manually replicate settings between programs. Cre-ate a custom Job Option in Distiller 7.0, and you’ll find that the same PDF-creation option is then available in InDesign CS2.
PDFs from InDesign CS2
Previous versions of InDesign (and Illustrator) exported PDFs with CID-encoded fonts. While CID encoding has been part of the PDF spec (as well as PostScript Level 3) for quite some time, it caused problems with some RIPs whose vendors initially neglected to support it. Current RIPs from most major vendors are now able to handle CID encoding. Even so, CS2 applications use it only when absolutely necessary (e.g., characters outside the “old 256” character set).
InDesign CS2 supports direct export to versions ranging from 1.3 (Acrobat 4.0) to 1.6 (Acrobat 7.0), with an explicit setting for PDF/X-1a. Don’t be intimidated by all the letters and numbers. Here’s a decoder ring:
High Quality Print: Suitable for desktop printing.
PDF/X-1a:2001: Preferred file submission for commercial print (flattened transparency).
PDF/X-3:2002: For use in color-managed workflows.
Press Quality: General file submission for print (Caution: Unflattened transparency).
Smallest File Size: Suitable for email or Web posting.
If you want to email or print a PDF, the correct settings are fairly obvious, but the choices for a print-centric PDF are a bit confusing. Press Quality creates an Acrobat 5.0-compatible file with unflattened transparency, which may be problematic if your print service provider doesn’t handle it correctly. PDF/X-1a creates an Acro-bat 4.0-compatible file, which flattens transparency. Think of it as the lowest common denominator format meeting the strict requirements for a blind exchange. If your printer doesn’t provide specific settings for gener-ating PDFs, play it safe and use PDF/X-1a.
What about Acrobat 6.0- and 7.0-flavored PDFs? For now, reserve the newer flavors just for file distribution (not for print), until the prepress software and hardware catches up. Use them only when you’re creating files containing multimedia components, or if you want to take advantage of layers in PDFs.
Now that you have a PDF, what can you do with it?
Acrobat 7.0 Professional boasts some valuable features for those in the graphic arts. It’s now possible for users of free Adobe Reader 7.0 to participate in commenting and review. It’s necessary to have Acrobat 7.0 Profes-sional to set things in motion by choosing Comments>Enable for Commenting in Adobe Reader. But then users of Adobe Reader 7.0 will have the ability to add sticky notes and drawing markups to your PDFs (although, oddly, they’re unable to fill forms in such documents: open one door, close another). Interestingly, users of Reader 6.0 can also open such PDFs and comment (who knew?), although they’ll get an alert that the file “ap-pears to use a newer format,” and are restricted to basic commenting—no drawing tools. (Apparently, fancy Reader features were considered for version 6.0, but never fully deployed.)
The Print Production Toolbar greatly expands the user’s ability to find and fix PDF problems. Output Pre-view lets users check for potential problems, such as RGB content and extraneous spot colors. The Preflight feature checks a PDF against preset or custom profiles, flagging issues like low-resolution images or non-embedded fonts. Preflight Droplets allow batch processing of folders of suspect PDFs. You also can now repair problems that used to require a trip back to the originating application: The Convert Colors tool can change RGB content to CMYK; the Ink Manager, like InDesign’s, can re-map spot colors (or convert them to process); and the Fix Hairlines feature can fatten up anorexic rules. You can crop, increase page size, flatten transpar-ency, and even add printer marks.
You may not be familiar with the last offering on the Print Production toolbar, JDF Job Definitions. “Oh, no,” you’re thinking, “Not another acronym!” JDF (Job Definition Format) is the equivalent of a job ticket, em-bedded in a PDF, containing specifications such as media size, number of inks, or binding requirements. De-vices and processes that are JDF-aware can validate a PDF against the job settings and determine if it’s safe to proceed.
Acrobat 7.0 Professional currently offers the most support for JDF implementation, but there’s also limited support in InDesign CS2. When exporting as a PDF, the Export Adobe PDF dialog (under Advanced) now in-cludes the option to invoke JDF profiles created in Acrobat.
What does this mean to you? Maybe not much at the moment, but keep an eye on that acronym. As digital printing and short runs become more prevalent, errors become more costly to tight schedules. The internal check system afforded by JDF is likely to become a key component. For more information on JDF, visit:
www.adobe.com/jdf and www.cip4.org.
Authoring multimedia PDFs in InDesign
When placing native, layered Photoshop files in InDesign no longer gives you a thrill, try placing a QuickTime movie. That’s right, you can place multimedia files in much the same way you place PSDs and AIs, resulting in a very lively exported PDF. Text can be hyperlinked, table of contents entries become bookmarks, and you can even create clickable buttons—all in InDesign. Poof! Your page layout application is now a multimedia author-ing program!
For some compelling examples of multimedia PDFs authored in InDesign, check out www.bcpictures.com.
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