For all of the universal presence of the PDF format it’s a constant surprise just how many people are unaware of the existence of Acrobat Professional, the software used to create and manage those PDFs. But why would you want to make a PDF?
Well, at its simplest level, the PDF is about as close as you can get digitally to the printed page – a universal, freely distributed medium which, once editing is complete, can be published in a locked format and distributed without fear of it being changed.
Acrobat has long been a favourite of graphics stables and designers, not only for its control over layout but also over colour space and print output. Over the years, more and more capabilities have been added to the engine and the latest incarnation continues along these lines.
That’s not to say that the interface isn’t initially user friendly – novices are greeted with a Getting Started dialogue which guides you step by step through various common tasks such as PDF creation, document merging, exporting, etc..
Stray away from your trusty guide though, and you’re into a haunted quagmire of toolbars, palettes and icons. Thousands of them. With even more waiting just a click or two in any direction. I’ve never seen such a mind-numbing array of buttons. Obviously you don’t have to have them all on screen at once, but what you do have to do is remember where on earth they all are, since Adobe have, rather bafflingly, neglected to include the option to save your workspace. This feature, which is available in Adobe’s other flagship applications, has never been so needed as it is here. Or isn’t here, as the case may be.
Unfortunately, Adobe’s constant to drive cram more into the Acrobat package is probably its biggest drawback. Acrobat Professional 8 lumbers like a walrus, shuddering under the weight of all those esoteric features.
A quick search of the world wide web will turn up many cheap or even free PDF creation applications and plugins, each clocking in from a few hundred kilobytes to a few megabytes. AP8 gobbles up an alarming 1 gigabyte of disk space. That’s right, 1GB! Now that’s all very well since hard drives come big and cheap these days (just like my …snip!) , but the bloat doesn’t stop there. I found it chugged along in fits and starts even on a dual-core machine with 2GB of RAM, although, in fairness, blame should probably be aimed equally at Windows Vista, the Mr Creosote of the operating system world.
In short though, if you’re a graphics repro house then this is probably right up your street, but for the rest of us – and those of us with ordinary machines – you’re probably better off getting a converter application or plugin.
