Product Reviews

Since its humble beginnings as a mere cross-platform document format, Adobe PDF has grown into an industry serving business for prepress, Web development and multimedia presentation. In fact, the vast potential and expectations of PDF have outstripped the core Acrobat program in recent years. But with Acrobat 6.0 Professional, Adobe brings it all back home.

For many, Adobe PDF is still just a cross-platform document format, typically used for product manuals on CD-ROM and brochures on Web sites. PDF technology is built into Mac OS X for 2D rendering, and you can turn any document into a PDF from any program's Print dialog window. Plus, you can export from most graphics packages directly to PDF. Acrobat, however, not only creates PDFs, but also processes documents for editing, reviewing, publishing and distributing PDFs. With Acrobat, a PDF can contain virtually any sort of multimedia. It can: be built from Web pages; feature internal hotlinks and clickable external URLs; be indexed and bookmarked; and it's the standard on which modern prepress workflows are now based.

Acrobat 6.0 has been split into the Standard edition, which focuses on basic PDF creation and collaborative reviewing tools; and the Professional edition with all the works, which we're looking at here. If you're involved in PDF creation and management for design, prepress and electronic publishing, you'll want the Professional edition.

Prepress perks

Upgraders from Acrobat 5.0 will note that version 6.0 is fully MacOS X-native, including the Distiller utility. In most cases, you'll only need Distiller for setting up PDF creation settings (previously known as Job Options), then produce PDFs by outputting to the Adobe PDF virtual driver automatically installed into your Mac's Print Center. Upgraders should also be blown away by the fresh interface design. Although Acrobat 6.0 Professional does not conform to Adobe's

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own interface standards, the new design is outstanding. Pop-up tool menus and the How To window ensure you never get lost, and complex features such as digital signatures can be navigated with much more confidence.

Prepress users will appreciate that Acrobat 6.0 Professional now provides essential tools previously only available at extra cost. The upgrade at last includes its own preflighter, and you configure prepress industry PDF settings such as PDF/X with a couple of clicks. Advanced production tools include the ability to set bleed values, handle colour management, choose how transparency effects are flattened, and both view and print documents in their ink separations. All users will love the Print dialog window with its actual page thumbnails.

Multimedia and Web authors are served a similarly major upgrade. The new PDF format (1.5) supports full embedding of multimedia content, including QuickTime and Flash. Not only is PDF now a truly self-contained and portable presentation format, it means downloaded Web sites retain their animated Flash functionality. Adobe has even built in extra page transition effects for presentations, and cleaned up the form creation tools to make them easier to use.

Business bonus

In the business arena, Adobe has really gone to town on the reviewing and commenting tools. The review tracking window is bigger and clearer, and comment windows actually point to their associated embedded locations. You can mark up text in the style of a sub editor, complete with copy cross-outs, insertions and arrowed lines, as well as the existing highlights and actual copy edits. Individual reviewers can add their comments and changes to a PDF you've sent them, then use the one-step Send command to email them right back to you.

Even basic PDF creation has undergone an overhaul. It's now possible to turn any Microsoft Office v.X document into a PDF with one click. Alternatively, you can run Acrobat and use the Create PDF command to turn a variety of file formats into PDFs without having to run the original creator applications. You can even pick up several files, each a different format, and convert them into a single multipage PDF in one step.

The only issue holding us back from awarding a full five mice to Acrobat 6.0 Professional is that a couple of great features - in-browser navigation and multilayered documents - are only available to people running Windows. Don't let it deter you, though - this is a must-have upgrade.