Digital Workflow: Collaborative Image Review, Part 2

CATEGORIES: Columns, July/August 2006 | Taz Tally | July 07, 2006

Adobe Acrobat and PDF are a far more powerful and useful duo than most folks give them credit for. And for collaborative review of images, they’re hard to beat. In Part 1 of this series (Layers magazine, May/June 2006, p. 52), we used Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop to view, sort, and process images into a PDF presentation. Now we’ll cover how to use that PDF presentation file in Acrobat to view, sort, and create and share comments.

Viewing, arranging, and navigating images in Acrobat

Once you’ve created and opened your PDF in Acrobat you have numerous viewing options. Expand the PDF viewing window to its maximum dimensions. If you have a lot of Toolbars open, you can close some of them to provide more viewing room. Press F8 to hide all the palettes to reduce clutter during viewing, but you’ll want to activate the Commenting Toolbar when you’re ready to create comments in the PDF.

Click the Single Page view icon located in the lower-right corner of the Acrobat main window to limit the display in the main view panel to one page (or image in our case). Now click on the Pages tab located on the left side of the main Acrobat window. This will activate a left-side view panel that allows you to view multiple pages at once. Click-and-drag the divider between the main view panel and the Pages panel to scale the horizontal dimensions of the Page panel. Click on the Options menu located at the top of the Pages panel and select Enlarge or Reduce Page Thumbnails to either increase or decrease the size of the Pages thumbnails to suit your viewing needs.

To rearrange images in the Pages panel, simply click-and-drag an image to a new position. Command-click (PC: Control-click) to select multiple nonsequential images or Shift-click to select sequential images prior to moving them. (Note: When you click on a thumbnail in the Pages panel its full-size image appears in the main view panel.)

Click on the full-size image and press the Up or Down Arrow keys to advance or retreat through the images. When in the Pages panel, use the Arrow keys to navigate up, down, left, and right through the images. A colored selection border will appear around the selected image. Press Return/Enter to view any selected image in the Pages panel in the main view window.

Commenting and marking up images

Acrobat provides a complete set of commenting and markup tools for use with your images. Here’s how they work:

STEP ONE:
Select Tools>Commenting>Show Commenting Toolbar. Then select Tools>Drawing Markups>Show Drawing Markups Toolbar. Note these Toolbars can either float free or be docked in the area above the main Acrobat window.

STEP TWO:
Select an image in the Pages panel to view it in the main view window. Now choose the Note tool from the Commenting Toolbar, and click in the upper-left area of the image. This places a Note icon and presents a text field dialog. Type in “Let’s lead off with this image.”

STEP THREE:
Activate another image and select the Callout tool from the Drawing Markups Toolbar. Click on the image and in the text field that appears, type in your text. In our example, we typed “Neutralize the white in the tail to make it pop.” Switch back to the Callout tool again, resize your callout box, and click-and-drag the callout arrow so that it points to the area to which you’re referring.

STEP FOUR:
For another example of a comment/markup, activate a third image, select the Line tool, and drag it across the image. (You’ll find the Line tool in the Arrow tool’s drop-down list.) Double-click on your line in the image and type in your text in the resulting field. In our example, we dragged the Line tool across the top of the bent horizon in our image and typed “I Suggest straightening out this horizon line with the Lens Correction Filter in Photoshop.”

STEP FIVE:
Experiment with the other Commenting and Drawing Markup tools to become familiar with them. Once you’re through making your comments and markups, simply click on the Comment tab on the bottom left to view them all.
Each listed comment has the page number, the type of comment, the name of the author, and the comment. Click the [+] symbol to reveal the date of the comment as well. These comments can be checked, sorted, searched, and printed (see the icons at the top of the Comments panel).

Sharing your comments

There are numerous ways to share your comments. Here are the two I’ve found the most useful.

Method 1—Send the PDF as is:
Simply save the PDF and send it to whomever you would like to have comment/markup your PDF. They can then open this PDF and click on the Comments tab to view all the Comments. Recipients can: (1) Add their own comments (which will appear with their name and a different color than yours); (2) accept or reject comments by clicking the Set Status button, choosing Review, and selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down menu; or (3) they can select one of your comments and click the Reply button located at the top of the Comments panel.

Method 2—Summarize Comments:
Select the Comments panel’s Options menu located in the upper-right corner of the panel, and select Summarize Comments. There are four types of summaries available. My favorite option is to have the Document and Comments with Connector Lines on Single Pages. Experiment with the various kinds and variables to create comment summaries that suit your fancy.

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