Welcome to Part 2 of our look at 25 cool Acrobat features. I hope you enjoyed the first part, and I’m sure you’re gonna love this installment, too. Here you’ll find out about some cool navigation tricks, how to manage mulitple PDF’s, and how to use audio and video in Acrobat. And for all you traditional print designers, I’m gonna finish off with two must-know Acrobat commands that’ll make your pre-press life a breeze. So let’s get to it!
Secret #9: Articles: Navigatin’ Complex Documents With Ease!
Articles—you know in newspapers it’ll say “story continued on A15,” or something like that, right? Then you have to flip until you get to the right page. Well, articles in Acrobat’ll let you simply click to jump to continue reading—it’s yet another way to nagivate through a PDF, and it works really well for newsletters or any sort of file that has mulitple stories within it. Head for the Advanced Editing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing), and click on the Article tool. Click and drag a box around the column of your first article; then navigate to where the article continues and drag a second box around that column. Keep dragging boxes for for each of your article columns; then when you wanna test it out, grab the Hand tool and give your article a click. Keep clicking to navigate all the way through the length of the article.
Secret #10: Wow, Convert An Entire Website to PDF!
This next one’s kind of a weird one, but cool none the less: you can convert not just a web page, but an entire website into a PDF. Sounds pretty cool huh? If ya think this sounds like fun, head to File > Create PDF > From Web Page. The rest is kinda self-explanatory. Throw in a URL, decide how many levels deep you wanna go, and hit Settings to decide how you want the conversion to go. Sound sweet? Only thing is, when the heck ya gonna need this? I used this once when I was on my way to New York, and needed to review the client’s website beforehand. I converted their entire site to PDF and reviewed it on the plane ride down. Cool huh? Beats the heck outta the in-flight peanuts, anyway!
Secret #11: Manage ‘N Navigate Those PDF’s With Organizer
Acrobat’s Organizer is awesome. It’s like a mini file manager, allowing you to browse through your files visually. Choose File > Organizer > Open Organizer to get started. Once open, you can sort through, view, manage, open, and even print and email PDFs. Use the column on the left to choose how you want to navigate through your PDFs . Use History to show ya all the PDFs you’ve opened today, yesterday, or as far back as a year ago (holy hell!), or browse through PDFs by location. For example, see all the PDFs on your hard drive, or on a network drive. Finally, you can browse your files by using something called Collections, which are really cool—read up on ‘em if you have a sec. Now, once you find the one you’re after, double-click on that sucka, and he’ll open up in Acrobat, ready to go.
Secret #12: Use PDF Package To Make Your Proposals Sing!
PDF Packages are hard to describe, so you’re definitley gonna have to check this one out for yourself—but I’ll give ‘er a try. Do you ever have to submit a group of files to management or to a client? Something that you’d traditionally put into binders, with cover pages, and that sorta thing? Well, PDF Packages are the same sorta idea, but it’s all electronic, of course. So to give it a whirl, go to File > Combine Files; then click the Add Files button and add in all the files that you want as a part of your package. When you’re good, click on Next down in the bottom right. In the next screen, choose Assemble Files Into A PDF Package; then click Create, and Acrobat’ll create a package for you. Now, the important thing to know is that the files are not combined into one single file—they’re still all separate files, just organized into a package. See your files over in the left-hand pane? And you can have a cover sheet for your package, too. Click on Cover Sheet above the file list to have a looky. Pretty cool. Hope you like it!
Secret #13: Lost It? Find It With Search!
Where the heck did that file go?! Well, the frustration subsides with Acrobat’s powerful Search command. You know about using the Find command to search within a file, right? Well, how about searching across mulitple documents? In fact, you could search all PDFs that sit on your hard drive, on a network drive, or in a specific folder. And there’s a bit more power under this fella’s hood, too. See down at the bottom where it reads Use Advanced Search Options? Give ‘er a click, my friend, and suddenly you’ll be presented with a few additional options. Best part is, when you do your search, Acrobat presents the results in the Search window, so you can scan through them before committing to opening them—you can even read the content of the PDFs that come back as results without opening ‘em! So there ya go, there’s some supa-sweet stuff with Search!
Secret #14: Crank Up The Interactivity With Audio And Video!
Oh yeah, baby! Audio and video in a PDF? No problem, it’s the easiest thing in the world! Of course though, as with web design, Flash development, and so on, you’ve gotta have a decent audio file, or some edited and compressed video ready to go before you drop it into Acrobat. Kinda goes without saying, but some people don’t know this. Kay, we’ll do audio first. Whatcha do is open up your Advanced Editing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing); then click on the Sound tool (it looks like a speaker). Next, click and drag a box around some content on your PDF that you want to have activate the sound. The dialog box that appears will allow you to browse for an audio file, as well as choose whether or not to embed the content into the PDF. Alright, now for video. This works pretty much the same as audio. On the Advanced Editing toolbar, click on the Movie tool; then click and drag a box where you want your video to play back. Once again in the dialog box, browse for your movie, choose if you want to embed it into your file, and set its poster options. Just think of all the possibilities!
Secret #15: Checkin’ Inks, Overprints, And More With Output Preview!
Alright print designers, these next two secrets are for you, so pay attention! First up, Acrobat’s Output Preview command. Whether you’re sending PDFs out to print, or you’re on the receiving end, getting PDF files for use on press, you’ll wanna make use of this handy and powerful feature. This guy reminds me of a souped up version of Photoshop’s Channels, but for an entire PDF. Head to Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview to have a looky. First off, if Separations is selected in the Preview box, you’ll see the color plates used by the PDF listed. Awesome! Turn ‘em on or shut ‘em off, and you’ll see what’s what in the document. It gets better. Towards the bottom, you’ve got your Total Area Coverage, which is awesome for those magazine and newspaper ads. Cool huh? Did ya know this command was even in Acrobat? Okay, we’ll finish this with a bang. My personal favorite is when you choose Color Warnings from the Preview box. There, you can set Acrobat to tell you want parts of the document are overprinting, and which are using rich black. Totally killer, and no more messin’ around trying to figure out why the damn file won’t separate! Now go nuts and start experimenting!
Secret #16: Preflight Those PDF’s For Pre-Press Perfection!
Alright print designers, you still with me? Did you recover after the Output Preview secret? This next one is Acrobat’s crown jewel when it comes to print production—Preflight! You may have heard about this command, as it’s been makin’ a lot of noise in the industry, so without further adu, choose Advanced > Preflight. In the dialog that appears, you’ll be given a huge list of what are called Preflight Profiles. Expand the categories and take a look see. There’s tons of stuff in there to keep you busy. Some personal favs, all found under PDF Analysis: List Bitmaps Below 300ppi, List Images Not CMYK, and List Transparent Objects. That last one should be called List All #@%! Transparent Objects, but I digress. Now, pick the Preflight Profile you want; then click Execute at the bottom. Be sure to laugh ruthlessly as you do, cuz the Preflight dialog is gonna spit back everything that’s right—and most importantly, wrong—with the PDF. So you’ll be able to say to your client, “Bro, it’s the photo of the headless chicken on page 4. It’s not CMYK!” Have lots of fun with this guy, he’ll reduce the stress levels for sure!
Cool stuff, huh? Don’t forget, we still have a third installment in the 25 Acrobat Secrets series…check it out here!
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