Acrobat PDF and Workflow InDetail
Frank Romano · 2000
From the Book: PREFACE: PDF is a phenomenon. Adobe's Portable Document Format, known as cross-platform utility, is also the cross-media utility. It is profoundly changing the the print industry. It is also helping to evolve electronic publishing. If you are a graphic designer, a prepress specialist, a printing company, an art director, a production person, a Web publisher, or a publishing professionalyou had better stay up to date on Acrobat. Acrobat 4 has features of interest to the high-end printing industry. It is designed to be the sub-atomic particle of new digital workflows. Workflow is more than moving electronic files around. It is the glue that links the creative professional to the information consumer. A PDF-centric workflow uses a complete, self-contained file as a component in a production workflow or the final document in a publishing workflow. Designers and their printers send PDFs to their clients for soft-proofing on screen or hard copy printouts on their printer. Fonts and graphics are already embedded in the PDF file (if all went well). They don't need the page-layout program the designer used, because they can view and print the PDF with the free Acrobat Reader. With the full version of Acrobat, the client can annotate revisions or approvals with notes, sound files, strike-throughs, drawings, or highlightsright in the PDF. For publishing purposes it is the one format that preserves the form and content of the information and is universally accessible. Every day, thousands of people around the world, using every major computer platform, download the free Adobe Reader from adobe.com. A decade ago, when Acrobat was introduced,itwas seen as the replacement for print. Today, it is seen as the salvation of print. It makes printing production more effective and engenders new workflows. It has a natural place on the Web and disk-based information distribution. Adobe Acrobat is the product. PDF is the file format. This book is about both and the way you work with this unique program in digital systems. Frank Romano Rochester, NY April, 2000