Creating PDF Files in Creative Suite Applications

More than any other programs, the Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications are optimized from the get-go to make good PDF files. The CS2 applications use built-in core technologies that ensure consistency and reliability (as we describe in "Core Technologies That Bind" in Chapter 7, "Managing and Customizing the Interface"). One of these core technologies is the PDF Library, which manages the creation, rendering and display, editing, conversion, and printing capabilities of PDF files.

There are two primary ways to create PDF files from the Creative Suite applications. You can directly export a PDF file using the application's Export or Save As command, applying settings to configure the PDF file as desired. The second, more traditional approach is still favored by some print service providers: In all the CS2 applications, you can create a PostScript file from the Print dialog box; then you process the PostScript file with Acrobat Distiller to create the PDF file. (For information on creating PDF files from Acrobat 7.0 Professional, see the following section, "Converting Files, Scans, and Web Pages to PDF.")

We wholeheartedly recommend that, almost always, you should use the direct export method of creating PDF files. Using the PDF Library core technology, the direct export method is more efficient than the two-step Distiller process, can include all the PDF elements that PostScript can't, and creates a clean, device-independent PDF file.

Directly Exporting PDF Files

New with the CS2 applications, the interface for creating PDF files is unified among the applications. Use any of these methods to export a PDF file:

• In InDesign, choose File > Export. Choose Adobe PDF from the Format menu, and click Save. You'll see the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (Figure 14-2, top left).

  Figure 14-2. The Adobe PDF export dialog boxes in InDesign (top left), Illustrator (top right), and GoLive (bottom) share a similar interface.

  

• In Illustrator, choose File > Save As. Choose Adobe PDF (pdf) from the Format menu, and click Save. You'll see the Save Adobe PDF dialog box (Figure 14-2, top right).

• In Photoshop, choose File > Save As. Choose Photoshop PDF from the Format menu, and click Save. (See Figure 4-33 in Chapter 4, "Pixels and Raster File Formats.")

• In GoLive, first click the PDF Preview button at the top of the window to view your web page. Then choose File > Export > HTML As Adobe PDF. The Export Adobe PDF dialog box appears (Figure 14-2, bottom).

Options differ somewhat between applications. For example, in InDesign you can choose a page range and create a PDF file from a spread options that don't make sense in Illustrator, Photoshop, or GoLive.

Using PDF Presets for Specific Output

All the CS2 applications share common PDF creation settings files, called presets. A preset is a predefined collection of settings based on best practices for specific output, such as Smallest File Size for posting on the web or Press Quality for high-end printing. You can apply them with one click. Not only do these presets work when directly exporting from InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and GoLive, but these are the very same presets used in Acrobat Distiller 7.0 when processing PostScript files from Adobe and non-Adobe applications. (In fact, they're based on the Acrobat Distiller .joboptions file format, the most widely used and accepted PDF creation settings format. Distiller refers to them as settings files. We discuss them in the following section, "PDF and Non-Adobe Applications.")

In each of the applications, just choose a preset from the Adobe PDF Preset menu at the top of the Export or Save As dialog box.

All the CS2 applications except GoLive CS2 share five presets High Quality Print, Press, Smallest File, and two PDF/X standards for the "blind transfer" of files to publications like magazines and newspapers. Some additional presets are optimized for particular applications. (You can also customize your presets; see the following section, "Creating Custom Presets.")

• High Quality Print: Use this preset to create a PDF document for high-quality printing on desktop printers and proofers. Color and grayscale images are downsampled to 300 ppi. Colors are left unchanged (not converted to another color space). Transparency is retained (Acrobat 5 compatibility is the default see the "Setting Appropriate Compatibility" section below).

• Press Quality: Use this preset for high-quality commercial printing. Color and grayscale images are downsampled to 300 ppi. RGB colors are converted to CMYK; CMYK values are unchanged. Transparency is retained (Acrobat 5 compatibility is the default). (See also the "Working with a Print Service Provider" section in Chapter 16, "Preflighting and Printing," for more information about preparing files for print.)

• Smallest File Size: Use this preset for onscreen display, email, and the web. Color images are downsampled to 100 ppi, grayscale images to 150 ppi. Color is converted to sRGB. Transparency is retained (Acrobat 5 compatibility is the default).

• PDF/X-1a:2001 and PDF/X-3:2002: Choose one of these presets for the "blind exchange" of final print-ready PDF files and to reduce common errors in a document, such as missing fonts and images or incorrect color spaces. Transparency must be flattened. For details, see the sidebar, "The PDF/X Standards."

• Standard (Distiller only): Similar to High Quality Print, this preset converts colors to sRGB and downsamples images to 150 ppi.

• PDF/A (Distiller only): This preset supports the draft ISO standard for long-term preservation (archiving) of electronic documents.

• Illustrator Default (Illustrator only): Use this preset when you plan to edit the file again in Illustrator, or place it in an application like InDesign, when the final use of the PDF file is unknown.

• GoLive Default (GoLive only): Use this preset to include PDF documents with embedded movies, layers, and interactive elements such as hyperlinks, forms, and rollovers.

• Mobile PDF (GoLive only): Use this preset to create PDF documents optimized for hand-held, mobile devices.

Table 14-1 shows the default PDF presets that are in each application.

Table 14-1. PDF Presets in Creative Suite Applications

PDF Preset	Acrobat Distiller 7.0	InDesign CS2	Illustrator CS2	Photoshop CS2	GoLive CS2
High Quality Print	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Press Quality	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Smallest File Size	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PDF/X-1a:2001	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
PDF/X-3:2002	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Standard	Yes	No	No	No	No
PDF/A:Draft	Yes	No	No	No	No
Illustrator Default	No	No	Yes	No	No
GoLive Default	No	No	No	No	Yes
Mobile PDF	No	No	No	No	Yes

Distilling PostScript Files into PDF

The second method for creating PDF files is more traditional and still favored by some print service providers. In this workflow, you first create a PostScript file using the Print dialog box in any CS2 application, and then process the PostScript file with Acrobat Distiller to create the PDF file.

Tip: One-Step Distilling with the Adobe PDF 7.0 Printer

You'll probably find it's easier to create a PDF file using the Adobe PDF printer driver (installed with Acrobat 7.0) than to create a PostScript file and process it through Distiller: Just select Adobe PDF 7.0 as the printer, choose your settings, and print. This creates the PDF file using Distiller in the background. For details, see the next section.

Because PostScript is an older technology than PDF, PostScript can't support many features notably, transparency, layers, tagged PDF (PDF containing document structural information, useful for a screen reader application, for example), and interactive elements like bookmarks and hyperlinks to name but a few. Also, because it's usually tied to printing to a specific printer, the document's PostScript code sometimes is printer-specific: Halftone information or page sizes may be included when the PostScript file is created.

Until the arrival of InDesign CS2 and Illustrator CS2, some service providers learned to use the Distiller route for a very practical reason. With earlier versions of these applications, directly exported PDF files sometimes would fail to output on older PostScript RIPs (raster image processors), and would generate PostScript errors because of font problems. This is now changed, and there are few reasons anymore to use the Distiller method with the CS2 applications (see the sidebar "Good News About Embedded Fonts and Older Raster Image Processors").

Good News About Embedded Fonts and Older Raster Image Processors

On older, non-Adobe raster image processors (RIPs), directly exporting PDF files from InDesign or Illustrator CS or earlier versions could cause a PostScript error and prevent the file from printing. When InDesign CS and Illustrator CS exported PDF files with embedded fonts, the fonts were written in a special format (called CID-keyed, or sometimes Identity H, for the more technically-inclined). This font-storage method has been part of the PostScript specification for at least a decade, but some older, non-Adobe RIPs don't support it. In the past decade, most RIP manufacturers have released upgrades that support this encoding to support the larger number of glyphs in Asian and some Roman OpenType fonts but many print service providers have never upgraded their RIPs.

Adobe InDesign CS2 and Illustrator CS2 no longer embed CID-keyed fonts by default, so their directly exported files are smaller and more compatible with older RIPs. These applications now store fonts in a PDF file in the CID-keyed format only if the font has too many glyphs to use a standard font encoding protocol (which is limited to 256 characters). InDesign and Illustrator now handle font embedding similarly to the way that Acrobat Distiller does.