Chapter 41. UNDERSTANDING THE ACROBAT WORKING ENVIRONMENT

IN THIS CHAPTER

Best Practices (When to Use and Not Use Acrobat) 910

New Acrobat Features 914

File Formats Supported 915

The Designer Environment (Windows Only) 916

It's difficult to imagine document transfers without PDF nowadays. Since its introduction by Adobe in 1992, the Portable Document Format (PDF) has become as essential to document distribution worldwide as computers themselves. This format has grown from a solution to cross-platform document portability (hence its name) to become the key piece that has made digital print workflow a reality. Together with PDF came Acrobat, Adobe's tool for creating and editing PDF documents.

The biggest difference between Acrobat and the rest of the Creative Suite 2 members is that, unlike Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Image Ready, the current incarnation of Acrobat is not just one program but threeor actually four. The fourth element is the Adobe PDF printer driver, a minisuite of sorts inside the Creative Suite. Add to that the Acrobat Reader and you have the full suite at your disposal. Each of these elements of Acrobat has its own defined function. Sometimes they overlap but not that often.

Sorting through these different parts of Acrobat may seem like a daunting task, but it's not. All you need to remember is what to use when. In this chapter, and the following ones, we demystify Acrobat for your benefit.