Acrobat
Adobe's Move to Online Services - Part 1: Acrobat.com
by Kim Cavanaugh - 19-Jun-08
Reader Level: 
In the last few months Adobe Systems has made some rather remarkable shifts in how they envision their products being used, and how they see the next generation of web and multi-media authors working together. In this article you’ll learn a bit more about where Adobe is heading in the world of web-enabled services, and a fair dose of speculation on where this might all be leading as you see a review of the new tools provided by the free Acrobat.com service. With these new online services you can collaborate, share, and even teleconference with your colleagues no matter where they are as Adobe moves beyond the desktop and into the world where the web is as much about working with others as it is just showing them things.
The Adobe's Move to Online Services Series:
Adobe's Move to Online Services - Part 1: Acrobat.com
Adobe's Move to Online Services - Part 2: kuler, JamJar, and More
Making Acrobat Press-Quality PDFs from InDesign and Other Creative Suite Programs
by Bevi Chagnon - 21-May-07
Reader Level: 
This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to make press-quality PDFs from Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop (versions CS2 and CS3) with the correct job options for your particular type of document.
When made correctly, a press-quality PDF will sail like a breeze through your print shop’s prepress section.
The PDF has the correct color and resolution settings, your print shop is able to make their technical adjustments to it such as separations and trapping, and the finished printed product is just as you expected. Plus…it gets printed on time and within your budget without any problems.
Sound like a graphic designer’s Utopia?
Nah! Once you master Bevi Chagnon's 3-step method, making perfect PDFs is as easy as pie.
Audience: Graphic designers, publishers, desktop publishers, ad designers, prepress technicians, publication production managers, and others who are involved in print media. This tutorial is especially helpful for those sending electronic files to a print shop for either offset-, web-, or digital-printing presses. (Note: I mean web printing presses, not the World Wide Web or Internet.)
Topics covered in this tutorial:
- Acrobat presets: which one to use
- Press-quality vs. print-quality vs. PDF/X
- Customizing the job options
- Compatibility levels and how they affect your PDF
- Printer's marks and bleeds
- Compression and downsampling settings for photos and bitmapped images
- Color conversion settings
- Reviewing color breaks (separations)
- Embedding fonts
- Security settings
The Adobe PDF Series:
Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One?
Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web
Press-Quality PDFs: Making Acrobat PDFs from InDesign and Other Creative Suite Programs
Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web
by Bevi Chagnon - 02-Apr-07
Reader Level:
Think of a PDF as a wrapper: it holds together the text, graphics, photos, fonts and other items that make up your source document, and wraps them up into one convenient PDF file that you can send to commercial print shops for printing, or upload to your website, or send to a client for approval.
This second article in the series looks under the hood of PDFs and outlines the best practices for creating source documents and PDFs for your particular purpose—press-quality, print-quality, and web-quality PDFs.
The Acrobat PDF Series
Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One?
Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web
Press-Quality PDFs: Making Acrobat PDFs from InDesign and Other Creative Suite Programs
Create a Form Using Acrobat Professional
by Kim Dudley - 07-Mar-07
Reader Level: 
Acrobat can do a lot more then create and open PDFs. In this tutorial we will look at Acrobat Professional's form tools. Using a plain PDF we will create a data entry form.
Acrobat Professional's form tools allow for the creation of several different types of fields including text fields, item lists, check boxes, radio buttons and buttons. Actions and scripts can also be added to forms enabling a wide variety of tasks to be performed with one click. We will use some of these features to create a form that can be used for entering data, we will then demonstrate how this data can be exported for use in another application or PDF.
Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One?
by Bevi Chagnon - 06-Mar-07
Reader Level:
Acrobat. Reader. PDF. Adobe... lots of names for an incredible technology. This short introduction shows how Acrobat PDFs are used and how to choose which software to create them.
The Acrobat PDF Series
Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One?
Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web
Press-Quality PDFs: Making Acrobat PDFs from InDesign and Other Creative Suite Programs
Secure File Delivery with eEnvelopes
by Derrick Ypenburg - 16-Jan-07
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Another use for Acrobat is its ability to encrypt file(s) for secure delivery to your intended recipients. This is done with Acrobat's eEnvelope feature. You can easily encrypt/secure files without modifying the original files themselves. The intended recipient can have full ownership and editability of the documents once the envelope has been opened. Unintended recipients who might have acquired the PDF eEnvelope by one means or another will not be able to open the envelope without a password or certificate.
This tutorial will cover how to secure files with an eEnvelope for delivery and the different security methods and envelopes types Acrobat offers.
Creating Navigation in PDFs - Part 2: Hotspots and Buttons
by Derrick Ypenburg - 03-Jan-07
Reader Level:
In Part 1 of this series, Creating Navigation in PDFs: Bookmarks, I covered how to navigate to pages and custom page-views in a PDF document by creating and using bookmarks. This tutorial will also cover how to navigate a PDF to pages and custom page-views, but by creating and using buttons and hot-spots that exist directly in the PDF instead. This creates a PDF that navigates more like a webpage or interactive book/manual.
This article requires that you have Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional.
Creating Navigation in PDFs Part 1: Bookmarks
by Derrick Ypenburg - 19-Dec-06
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Acrobat Standard or Professional makes it quite easy to create a document that has navigational features. Navigation can be created using the bookmarks pane as well as making actual buttons and hot-spots of a page for the user to click. When clicked, navigation can take a user to a particular page, or a particular page-view.
Being that PDF files can be quite extensive (i.e. software documentation in PDF format or e-books), creating navigation for a document is quite important. Navigation can only be created using Acrobat Standard or Professional but can be used by the free Acrobat Reader.
Part 1 of this series will cover creating navigation in a PDF document using the Bookmarks pane. Part 2 will cover the creation of buttons and hotspots right within the actual PDF pages.
Watermarking PDF Documents
by Derrick Ypenburg - 13-Dec-06
Reader Level:
Watermarking a PDF is a means of securing the intellectual property of its contents. If you're a designer sending a proof of a logo to a client, watermarking the proof can ensure that the client cannot start printing out the logo for their own uses before you have been paid or the job has been completed. Image Bank and other online stock-art websites watermark their contents as well to prevent theft. PDF versions of books are watermarked as well to prevent printed re-distribution of them.
This tutorial will cover the simple steps it takes to watermark a PDF document and securing its contents from being re-used without your permission.
Securing PDF Documents
by Derrick Ypenburg - 11-Dec-06
Reader Level:
Securing PDF documents is a great feature in Acrobat. A secure document can prevent changes, cutting, copying and printing of a document and it contents. The security features can also be set to only allow low resolution printing if a file needs to be printed but you don't want design proofs being taken to press.
This article covers password protecting the opening of a PDF document and restricting what a user can do with a PDF, such as printing and editing.
Cool GoLive Features: Part 3 - Exporting to PDF
by Sheri German - 08-Feb-06
Reader Level:
There are cool GoLive features, and then there are very cool GoLive features. Surely the native PDF creation and optimization tools in GoLive fall into the very cool category. No, let's make that very, very cool - how would you like to instantly create a PDF for mobile devices with the click of a button? If so, then follow along as I convert a regular Web page into a PDF that you can comfortably read on your PDA.
The Cool GoLive Features Series:
Cool Adobe GoLive Features: Part 1 - The Site Diagram Tool
Cool Adobe GoLive Features: Part 2 - Extending With Smart Forms
Cool Adobe GoLive Features: Part 3 - Exporting to PDF
Approximate download size: 480k
Matching Numbers in an Online PDF and its Printed Counterpart
by Les Greenberg - 30-Jan-06
Reader Level:
When someone looking at a printed book speaks to someone looking at an online PDF of that same book and tells them to delete the last paragraph on Page 19, they may both be looking at Page 19 but actually be seeing different pages. In this tutorial we will look at how PDF page numbers differ from printed page numbers, and follow along with the sample files to learn how to reconcile them.
On the Fly: Generating PDFs From PHP
by Thomas Pletcher - 30-Dec-04
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There are a number of ways you can create PDF files from PHP, and this introductory article will examine several. We'll show you how to enable PHP PDF generation on local and remote servers, and how to generate text, draw shapes, include images and build tables. A follow-up article will outline the process dynamic PDF generation using templates.
