25 Supa-Killah Acrobat Secrets, Part 2 [ continued ]

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? Share your Acrobat tips and secrets over in the comments. And don't forget, we still have one more part to the 25 Acrobat Secrets series, so keep watchin', it'll be posted soon!

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