Adobe Acrobat 7
Acrobat is essential for anyone involved in publishing--or for that matter, anyone who wants to create portable documents or capture Web pages with a click. (We refer, of course, to the full Acrobat package--beginning with the $299 Acrobat Standard edition.) But even this capable app needs a nudge.
View Notes
It's simple to use a full Acrobat package to add a note to a PDF. Click the Comment & Markup toolbar icon, and select Add a Note. The problem? Acrobat pushes the note halfway off-screen. The fix: Select Edit, Preferences, choose Commenting in the Categories list, and uncheck the Create new pop-ups aligned to the edge of the document box.
Hide Those Notes
Acrobat's annotation feature is convenient--unless you're on the receiving end of a PDF buried in notes. To suppress the notes quickly (in full Acrobat versions only; Acrobat Reader users are stuck), select Comments, Show Comments & Markups, Hide All Comments. If the Commenting toolbar is displayed, select Show, Hide All Comments.
Acrobat Your Way
When you "print" a file to PDF, Acrobat defaults to its poky standard settings. Here's how to create your own settings. In the print dialog box of any application, select PDF Printer (or Adobe PDF) as your output "device," and click the Properties button. Then choose the Adobe PDF Settings tab. Click the Edit button to the right of the Default Settings field, and you can create a new preset.
For faster desktop printing click General, and change 600 to 300 in the Resolution field. For smaller on-screen PDFs, select Images. In the 'Color Images' and 'Grayscale Images' sections, change the Downsample settings to 100 pixels per inch for image resolutions that exceed 100 pixels per inch. In the Monochrome Images sections, set the values to 300 pixels. Click the Save As button and name the preset.
Match a Face
Ever wonder why a PDF of a Web page doesn't resemble the Web page? Maybe the Web site won't let Acrobat download its fonts. Or maybe Acrobat isn't trying to download them. To change this behavior, open Acrobat, click the Create PDF button, and select From Web Page. Next, click the Settings button and, in the File Type Settings, select HTML and click the Settings button. Click the Fonts and Encoding tab, and then check the Embed Platform Fonts When Possible box. Click OK twice, and back at the 'Create PDF from Web Page' dialog box, click Create.
Reveal Spreads
Many documents (especially those laid out with Adobe's InDesign page-design program or a similar publishing tool) are designed to be read magazine-style, with two facing pages or spreads. But when Acrobat generates a PDF, it normally breaks these spreads into a series of single pages. To keep the spreads the next time you generate a PDF, check the Spreads box in your application's Print or Export dialog box.
Lock Up That PDF
Worried about the security of your PDF files? Don't rely on the controls available from a Print dialog box. Instead, create your PDF and then pull it into the full Acrobat program, which offers more-powerful and easier-to-use tools. Open the PDF in the full Acrobat program, click the yellow Secure lock toolbar icon, and select Secure This Document. Here you'll find two prefab security policies. To create your own, click the New button and follow the prompts. Password-based settings are easier to set up than certificate-based settings (and they're almost as good, except for state secrets). Take this route, and you can require passwords to open a PDF or (separately) to print, edit, copy, or extract content. Don't forget to protect metadata; otherwise, interlopers could use keyword searches to locate the file, although maybe not read it. Note: Acrobat doesn't record much metadata without telling you. To see and change what it does record, go to File, Document Properties and click the Description tab.
Go Acrobatless
Acrobat is not the only game in PDFville. The following alternatives are cheaper, though they do lack collaborative features--one reason to stick with Acrobat. Nitro PDF Pro (30-day trial, after that $89.10) is the only one in the group to offer a built-in PDF file viewer. It has good table and interactivity tools, and excellent controls over merging, splitting, and concatenating PDF files; and it lets you design forms, so you won't need the pricier Acrobat Professional. Jaws PDF Creator 3 ($84) is for publishing pros who need high-resolution output and powerful prepress tools. Jaws comes with prefab configurations that optimize PDF output for different situations; and you can create custom configurations. Its formidable prepress toolbox easily integrates into your PDF workflow. NovaPDF (Professional $40, Standard $30, Lite $20) is an entry-level choice for users who find Acrobat overkill. It offers solid 40-bit security, but its file compression tools are weak, resulting in fairly pudgy PDF files. If you're strapped for cash, though, this is a workable alternative to Acrobat.
Ad Choices