|
|
|
 |
| Frequently asked questions |
|
| Special answers on key issues for creative professionals considering Adobe® Acrobat® 6.0 Professional software: |
|
|
|
|
|
General |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why will creative professionals customers upgrade to Acrobat 6.0 Professional? |
|
|
A. |
Designers, print production artists and printers will all benefit from the new features in Acrobat 6.0 Professional. New review and commenting features streamline and automate the management of document review cycles. New validation, preflighting, PDF/X compliance, color separation previews, and PDF optimization tools make the creation and validation of PDF files intended for print production much easier. Advanced printing controls such as the preview and printing of color separations, and transparency flattening preview, give printers the tools they need to output high quality PDF files. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
With Adobe’s increased emphasis on the enterprise, has attention been taken away from the creative professional customer? |
|
|
A. |
Creative and print professionals are a main area of focus for Acrobat 6.0 Professional. The product contains features specifically for the creative professional such as easy PDF creation from design applications, powerful features for client review and commenting, along with pre-flighting, prepress, and advanced print features. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Is Acrobat Paper Capture functionality now included in both the Standard and Professional versions of Acrobat 6.0 Professional? |
|
|
A. |
Yes, this functionality is now part of Acrobat 6.0 Standard as well as Acrobat 6.0 Professional. This is in addition to the ability to create PDF files from Web pages, application files, and image files. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Mac OS |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Is Acrobat Distiller now native to Mac OS X? |
|
|
A. |
Yes, Acrobat Distiller (which is part of both Acrobat 6.0 Standard and Acrobat 6.0 Professional) is native to Mac OS X. The minimum system requirement for Acrobat 6.0 Professional is Mac OS X 10.2.2. Acrobat Distiller is a Cocoa application and Acrobat 6.0 is Mac OS X-native carbonized. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why is Mac OS X 10.2.2 (Jaguar) a system requirement? How does this affect solutions providers? |
|
|
A. |
A main goal of Acrobat 6 Professional is to support the needs of creative and print professionals. We feel that the best opportunity for supporting Macintosh customers is to support the future of the Macintosh platform: Mac OS X. Adobe has tested Acrobat 6.0 Professional on popular RIPs and prepress platforms to ensure compatibility with most prepress workflows. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why is there a disparity between the features in the Windows and Macintosh versions of Acrobat? |
|
|
A. |
There is parity between versions for the features that will appeal to creative professions, such as PDF/X-compliance, viewing and printing of color separations, and preflighting. There are features that are unavailable on the Macintosh such as browser-based viewing of PDF files, tagged PDF file creation from Microsoft Office X, and the ability to embed and play QuickTime compatible media.
Adobe strives to make the functionality on each platform as robust as possible, but in some cases, there are limitations. We will continue to work with other software vendors on the Macintosh platform to ensure maximum interoperability with third-party software on the Macintosh platform.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Is there a Web browser plug-in for the Mac OS? |
|
|
A. |
At this time there is no browser plug-in for the Mac OS. We will address this in a future release. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why does Acrobat 6.0 Professional not support browser browser-based viewing of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents? |
|
|
A. |
With each release of Adobe Acrobat, we strive for feature parity across platforms. In Acrobat 6.0 Professional there were a few features that we were not able to implement on the Macintosh due to time and resource constraints. Browser-based viewing of Adobe PDF files is one of the features that is only available on the Windows platform. This missing feature will affect how Macintosh customers view PDF files on the Web and how they participate in collaborative review cycles. For participating in review cycles, Macintosh customers can take advantage of the new e-mail-based review feature but they can't participate in browser-based reviews. The Acrobat team does aim to address browser-based viewing for the Macintosh in a future release of Acrobat. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why is Adobe Acrobat Elements available for Windows only? |
|
|
A. |
Adobe Acrobat Elements is a available only on Windows via licensing. Enterprise customers, such as IT and line of business managers, stated Windows as their platform requirement for the Acrobat Elements product. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Has application performance on the Macintosh platform been improved? |
|
|
A. |
Acrobat 6.0 Professional customers will notice an improvement in viewing performance when compared with Acrobat 5.0.5. There are also performance improvements in the areas of rendering documents with high-resolution images and complex vector-based content. In addition, new viewing and navigation features improve the time it takes to view sections of an image with tools such as dynamic zoom and the loupe tool. Users also have the ability to turn off high-resolution images and turn on page caching to help display performance. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Can you see the contents of an Adobe PDF 1.5 file within the body of an e-mail message in Apple’s Mail application? |
|
|
A. |
No, to view the PDF attachment you will have to double click the PDF icon and open the file using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or Adobe Reader 6.0. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PDF Creation |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What is the difference between PDF files made from Acrobat and those created from Mac OS X? |
|
|
A. |
PDF files created by the Quartz imaging model in Mac OS X do not use Adobe PDF creation technology. PDF files created by using the Preview button or the Save As PDF button in the Mac OS X print interface will be created by the Apple operating system. Apple PDF creation does not provide any options for optimization of the PDF documents and Apple PDF does not provide any PostScript to PDF conversion method. As a result, PDF files created from Mac OS X will be larger than Adobe PDF files, and may have challenges in searchability, accessibility, and professional print production workflows.
The easiest way to determine what software was used to create the PDF file is by viewing the Document Properties in the file menu of Adobe Reader and Acrobat 6.0. The Producer information describes the creator of the PDF file.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
How does exporting a PDF file from Adobe InDesign®, Adobe Photoshop®, or Adobe Illustrator® software differ from creating a PDF file using Acrobat? |
|
|
A. |
Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop use the Adobe PDF Library to convert their native file formats directly to PDF. Distiller uses the Adobe PDF Library to convert PostScript to PDF for both Adobe and non-Adobe applications. While the conversion processes are fundamentally different, the underlying technology is the same. Customers have the ability to create a PDF file in the manner that makes the most sense for their particular needs. Because nearly all Adobe applications are capable of creating high-quality PDF documents, creative professionals now have an expanded array of options for creating prepress-quality PDF documents. Every Adobe application that uses either the PDF Library or Distiller creates high-quality PDF files due to the richness of the Adobe imaging model. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What’s new in Acrobat Distiller 6.0? |
|
|
A. |
Acrobat Distiller 6.0 includes many new enhancements, although most of them are invisible to the average user. Acrobat Distiller 6.0 does a much better job of merging font subsets, resulting in a smaller PDF file. Acrobat Distiller 6.0 also supports the new PDF 1.5 features, such as JPEG2000 compression and Object Stream compression. Additionally, the Adobe PDF Settings (formerly known as job options) files have been redefined to create more optimized PDF files. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Acrobat Preflight |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What is preflight? |
|
|
A. |
Acrobat 6.0 Professional includes a tool for examining and validating documents intended for prepress output. This preflight tool allows users to catch errors before they become expensive mistakes in the RIP. The preflight feature can check for PDF/X compliance, PostScript compatibility, and hundreds of other user-definable options. Preflight profiles can be created to check PDF files for compliances with virtually any condition. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What is Validation in the Preflight tool? |
|
|
A. |
Validation refers to the ability to embed the results of a preflight examination on a document. The Preflight profile, the results of the preflight report, and a time stamp can be embedded into the PDF file. This embedded information travels with the document so that the recipient can view precise information about potential problem areas in the file. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
With the new validation and prepress features in Acrobat 6.0 Professional, isn’t Adobe competing with its partners that used to offer this functionality as plug-ins? |
|
|
A. |
In order to continue to provide value for creative professionals for prepress and print production, we added several enhancements to Acrobat 6.0 Professional, including the ability to preview and print color separations, preflighting, and advanced print capabilities.
The tools in Acrobat 6.0 Professional allow you to validate and output a file in prepress environments. Third-party plug-ins will still be required for editing and advanced tasks such as trapping and imposition. The Acrobat ecosystem — which now includes over 1,300 partners — will continue to expand with the Acrobat product family. We’ve involved our key Acrobat partners since the early stages of development of Acrobat 6.0, giving them time to integrate the new PDF format as well as extend their solutions to complement the desktop product family. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PDF/X Support |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What is PDF/X and how is it supported in Acrobat 6.0 Professional? |
|
|
A. |
PDF/X is an ISO standard for prepress content exchange intended to reduce the most common errors like missing fonts, images, and graphics. The format is based on the Adobe PDF specification and consists of recommendations and additional notations for facilitating the reliable delivery of press-ready PDF documents. With Acrobat 6.0 Professional, users can create PDF/X compliant files with Acrobat Distiller and check documents for PDF/X compliance with the preflight tool. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Can I use Acrobat Distiller to create PDF/X compliant files? |
|
|
A. |
Yes. Acrobat Distiller can create both PDF/X1-a and PDF/X-3 compliant files. These formats can be created by selecting the predefined PDF/X settings or creating custom PDF/X settings in Acrobat Distiller. The settings can be accessed when using watched folders, the Adobe PDF printer, opening PostScript files in Acrobat, or from Acrobat Distiller itself. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
How does Acrobat Distiller create PDF/X compliant files? |
|
|
A. |
Acrobat Distiller can scan an incoming PostScript file to ensure it meets the PDF/X compliance guidelines. When the file is compliant, Distiller will insert the proper information into the PDF file to make the file PDF/X1-a or PDF/X-3 compliant. When the PostScript cannot be used to create a PDF/X compliant file, Acrobat Distiller will fail the job, or can be configured to warn and continue. Acrobat Distiller will always produce a log file to describe any problems it encounters in the document.
For example, when converting a document to PDF, Acrobat Distiller will fail a job which contains RGB color spaces because Acrobat Distiller does not convert RGB color to CMYK. (Acrobat Distiller can only convert to sRGB, tag everything for color management, or discard all color management.) In this case, a log file is produced describing which content in the document has an RGB color space. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
What is the difference between PDF/X1-a and PDF/X-3? |
|
|
A. |
PDF/X1-a and PDF/X-3 are two ISO standard specifications based on the Adobe PDF 1.3 specification. The critical difference between PDF/X1-a and PDF/X-3 is the use of color. PDF/X1-a allows only Device CMYK and Spot colors (no color management information). PDF/X-3 allows the use of device-independent color. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why should I use PDF/X? Why can’t I just use regular PDF? |
|
|
A. |
Adobe PDF files have become a very important part of prepress document exchange because the format is universally viewable and printable. Because of its cross-platform compatibility, Adobe PDF files deliver a compact, reliable format for high-quality output. Because PDF/X is based on a relatively old version of PDF (Acrobat 4.0, or PDF 1.3), many of the benefits of the PDF file format cannot be included such as form fields, JPEG2000 compression, layers, and so on.
The PDF/X specification excludes these objects to ensure the most reliable output possible. Because it is not always easy to predict which type of imaging device or system might be consuming the PDF file, PDF/X can be a very efficient and quick way to create a PDF file that you know will output successfully anywhere on any device. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advanced Printing |
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Can I print separations from Acrobat 6.0 Professional? |
|
|
A. |
Yes. Acrobat 6.0 Professional provides the ability to print color separations from PDF documents. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Can I separate spot colors? What about RGB color? |
|
|
A. |
Acrobat 6.0 Professional can separate any color in a PDF document to CMYK. During separation printing, spot colors can be converted to process or output as individual, separate spot colors. RGB and device-independent color is converted to CMYK using Acrobat color management preferences. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
Why don’t the trim marks and bleeds show up in Print Preview or in my final output? |
|
|
A. |
In order to use printer’s marks in Acrobat, you must create a trim box using the Crop dialog. According to the PDF specification, it is illegal to place this type of content inside the page area. Thus, in order for Acrobat to ensure that the printer’s marks do not appear inside the page area, the user must define a Trim box, to specify which parts of the page are outside the page area. Acrobat will place printer’s marks 1/8-inch away from the trim box. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. |
I’m getting errors from my imposition system when I use the Print to File command. |
|
|
A. |
With print workflow systems like PREPS and other PostScript imposition tools, the optimal method for creating PostScript output is by using the Save As command. This will ensure DSC compliance, as well as provide the ability to create composite, device-independent postscript files. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
