Acrobat 7.0 Professional Features

Acrobat 7.0 Professional has such a wide range of capabilities for editing and working with PDF files that we can give only an overview and some starting points for your own exploration of this application. We'll also provide some useful production tips for such tasks as navigating through Acrobat, and searching, combining or repurposing PDF files. In later sections in this chapter, we'll focus on a few Acrobat features that we think are particularly worthy of discussion because of their novelty and utility, and some ways of moving PDF files into other applications.

Navigating and Viewing PDF Files

First and foremost, Acrobat is a PDF file viewer. Because its interface is so unlike the other members of the Adobe Creative Suite 2 family, it's worth taking a minute to focus on where things are (Figure 14-11). We discuss why it's so different in "And What's With That Acrobat Interface Anyway?" in Chapter 7, "Managing and Customizing the Interface."

Figure 14-11. The unique Acrobat 7.0 Professional interface.

Let's point out a few of the more obvious differences that are useful when viewing and navigating.

The Acrobat window has two panes. The Document pane, where you view the PDF file, is always open. The Navigation pane on the left can be opened by clicking a tab on the left side of the window, or by choosing View > Navigation Tabs, and selecting the tab that you want to open. Use the tabs to get to features like Bookmarks, Layers, Pages (formerly thumbnails), Comments, and so on.
The main navigation tool is the Hand tool. If something's not working the way you expect, make sure that the Hand tool is selected when navigating. You can turn on single-letter tool shortcuts (H for Hand, for example) by selecting Use Single-key Accelerators To Access Tools in Acrobat's General preferences.
The keyboard can be used for navigation. In Fit Page display (Command/Ctrl-0 [zero]), press Return/Enter to move forward through the document, or press Shift-Return/Enter to move backward. Pressing the Right Arrow or Down Arrow key moves ahead one page; the Left Arrow or Up Arrow key moves back one page.
Acrobat remembers your previous page views, both the page you were on and the magnification at which you were viewing. Press the green buttons on the status bar to go to Previous View (left-pointing) or Next View (right-pointing), or press Command/Ctrl-Left Arrow for Previous View and Command/Ctrl-Right Arrow for Next View.
Acrobat 7.0 doesn't display the current page size by default. You must move your mouse cursor over the lower left corner of the page in the document pane; a tool tip will appear at the bottom left of the screen showing the page size.
The status bar at the bottom contains both information and controls. At the bottom left, icons indicate special Acrobat features like layers and buttons to switch to full-screen view and to hide the toolbars. In the middle are navigation controls to move through pages. At the bottom right are buttons to switch between four page layouts Single Page, Continuous, Facing, and Continuous Facing.
Acrobat toolbars can be customized. Most toolbars don't show by default. See Chapter 7, "Managing and Customizing the Interface," for details.

Searching PDF Files

One of the features that makes PDF files so powerful is that you can do text searches in them. (We wish we could offer you that feature in this book!) There are two methods of searching the Find toolbar and the Search pane.

For a quick search of the currently active PDF document, choose Edit > Find (Command/Ctrl-F). The Find toolbar opens as a floating toolbar (Figure 14-12). Type a word in the field, and press Return/Enter. The first occurrence in the active document is highlighted. Then the Next and Previous buttons become available. Press Next to move to the next occurrence of the word, or Previous to move backward.

Figure 14-12. The Find toolbar provides a quick way of searching the currently active PDF file.

To search more than one open PDF document or extend your search to PDF files on your hard drive or across the Internet, use the more elaborate Search pane (Figure 14-11). To open the Search pane, click the Search button on the toolbar, or press Shift-Command/Ctrl-F.

In the Search pane, click a radio button to specify where you want to search: In The Current PDF Document or All PDF Documents In. If you select the latter, choose All Local Disks, or select locations from a menu, including drives, folders, and mounted volumes. To use more elaborate search criteria, click Use Advanced Search Options at the bottom of the pane. To search the Internet, click Search The Internet Using Yahoo! at the bottom of the Search pane. This searches for PDF files with your web browser.

Tip: Create a List of Search Instances

The Search pane is a good way to see a list of all instances of whatever you're searching for, along with their locations. Since it's a pane, you can keep it open while you're reviewing the document itself.

Combining PDF Files

Acrobat 7.0 Professional makes it easy to combine two or more PDF files into one. Choose File > Create PDF > From Multiple Files, or click the Create PDF button on the toolbar and select From Multiple Files. The Create PDF From Multiple Documents dialog box appears (Figure 14-13).

Figure 14-13. Easily combine PDF files with the Create PDF From Multiple Documents dialog box.

Click the Choose button (Macintosh) or Browse button (Windows) in the Add Files section to select or multiple-select files to combine. There are buttons to Remove, Move Up, or Move Down files in the combining order. You can even preview a file by clicking the Preview button. When you've completed your list, click OK to concatenate the files into a single new PDF file.

Repurposing PDF Files

PDF files are created for many purposes, such as high-quality printing or web viewing, and you can't expect a single file to meet every need. Sometimes a file must be repurposed. Now we'll tell you how to do that using the PDF Optimizer.

Use the PDF Optimizer to optimize a number of features of PDF files how large they are, what Acrobat Compatibility they have, whether they contain fonts or transparency, and other features. Choose Tools > Print Production > PDF Optimizer to open the PDF Optimizer dialog box (Figure 14-14).

Figure 14-14. The PDF Optimizer with controls to reduce file size and optimize a file for different uses.

Tip: Avoid the Reduce File Size Command

Acrobat 7.0 Standard has only one option for reducing file size, the File > Reduce File Size Command. If you have Acrobat 7.0 Professional, use the PDF Optimizer, which gives you much more control over optimizing, and avoid using the other command.

Here are some things you can do with the PDF Optimizer:

Change the Acrobat compatibility by selecting a different compatibility option in the Make Compatible With menu.
Choose different resolution and compression settings for a PDF file by selecting choices on the Image panel (shown in Figure 14-3). Image resolution is usually the largest contributor to large file size.
Flatten the transparency in the PDF file by choosing commands on the Transparency panel. (We discuss more about flattening transparency, and the settings to choose in "Controlling Transparency Flattening" in Chapter 16, "Preflight and Printing.")
Remove unnecessary PDF objects, like comments or thumbnails, using the Discard Objects and Clean Up panels.

Tip: Check Settings and Save a Preset

Before clicking OK in the PDF Optimizer, check to make sure that settings you don't intend (like compression) aren't included. And, if you find yourself using the PDF Optimizer to perform the same function repeatedly, save your customized settings as a preset by clicking the Save button at the top of the dialog box. The settings will be available from the Preset menu at the top of the dialog box.

Converting Files, Scans, and Web Pages to PDF

Acrobat has a surprisingly large number of ways to create PDF files, in addition to the methods described earlier in "Creating PDF Files in Creative Suite Applications."

Converting Files to PDF

Acrobat can open many file formats and convert them to PDF; simply choose File > Create PDF > From File, or press Command/Ctrl-N. On both Macintosh and Windows, you can open BMP, Compuserve GIF, HTML, JDF Job Definition, JPEG, JPEG2000, PCX, PNG, PostScript/EPS, Text, or TIFF files. On the Macintosh only, you can open PICT. In Windows only, you can open Autodesk AutoCAD, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Project.

To control the conversions, click the Settings button in the Adobe PDF Settings dialog box, and choose from the available options. For example, the settings for opening a TIFF file are shown in Figure 14-15.

Figure 14-15. Adobe PDF Settings dialog box, showing compression and color management choices for converting a TIFF file.

Scanning and OCR Conversion

Acrobat includes both scanning and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) features that allow scanning a document and converting it to a PDF file. You can scan either text or images. Acrobat uses the TWAIN software that was probably installed with your scanner. (For the meaning of the word TWAIN, see the sidebar, "Shall the TWAIN Meet?")

Begin by setting up your scanner as you normally would. Then choose from these options:

In Acrobat, choose File > Create PDF > From Scanner. Choose scanning options; and then click the Image Settings button to choose image options (Figure 14-16, left). Optionally, choose Recognize Text Using OCR, and click Settings to choose options that control OCR conversion to text.

Figure 14-16. Create PDF From Scanner dialog box, showing controls for scanning and OCR conversion (left). The Find First OCR Suspect command identifies possible text errors in the OCR conversion (right).
Scan documents using Photoshop or your scanner software, and use the OCR conversion feature afterwards: Open the scanned image in the document window (using the File > Create PDF > From File command); then choose Document > Recognize Text Using OCR > Start.

Behind the Scenes: Shall the TWAIN Meet?

TWAIN is a standard to link applications with image-acquisition devices like scanners. Most people think that the word TWAIN must be an acronym, but it's not.

The word "twain" is from Rudyard Kipling's The Ballad of East and West: "…and never the twain shall meet..." It was selected to indicate the difficulty, at the time the standard was developed, of connecting scanners and personal computers. To make it more distinctive, the word was formatted in all caps as TWAIN. This led some people to believe it was an acronym. A contest was held to come up with an expansion. None was selected, but the entry "Technology Without An Interesting Name" is often incorrectly attached to the standard.

Using either workflow, choose a PDF Output Style to create archival documents or documents with editable and searchable text and graphics:

For archival documents, choose Searchable Text (Exact) or Searchable Text (Compact). The image scan is kept in the foreground, with text hidden in the background. Text is searchable, but not correctable, in Acrobat. This could be used for a legal document, for example, where the image must be kept for archival purposes.
For editable and searchable documents, choose Formatted Text & Graphics to discard the bitmapped image and replace it with editable and searchable text and graphics. Then use the Find First OCR Suspect feature (Document > Recognize Text > Find First Suspect) to open the Find Element dialog box (Figure 14-16, right). Use this feature to accept the suspect (possibly misconverted) word, or to correct it, and to continue examining and correcting text errors.

Converting Web Pages to PDF

Another way to create a PDF file is to convert web pages. A captured web page converts HTML, text, images, and most other valid web formats, while maintaining the dynamic web links on the pages. You can use this feature to archive web sites, or to make them available when you're without an Internet connection.

(It's also possible to use the PDF Printer in Mac OS X to convert web pages to PDF (choose File > Print, click PDF, and choose Save As PDF from the pop-up menu). However, this option does not maintain the dynamic links to other pages or sites.)

To convert one or more web pages, choose File > Create PDF > From Web. The Create PDF From Web Page dialog box acts as a web browser, letting you choose any URL on the Internet (Figure 14-17, left). You can choose how many levels deep of the web site you want to capture, as well as a host of other settings. To choose settings for a supported file type like HTML, for instance, click the Settings button. In the Web Capture Settings dialog box (Figure 14-17, right), click on the General tab. Select HTML in the File Type Settings area, and click the Settings button. You can choose how text, background, links, fonts, and so on will be previewed in the PDF page, similar to how those preferences are set in a traditional web browser.

Figure 14-17. Acrobat used as a web browser to convert web pages to PDF (left). Settings control the appearance and layout of the converted pages (right).

Click the Create button in the Create PDF From Web Page dialog box to have Acrobat begin downloading all the web elements you've selected on the selected web site. When the first page is complete, it's displayed onscreen as a new PDF document (Figure 14-18). Optionally, as the pages are downloading, preview the download progress in the Web Capture Status dialog box (bottom right). Bookmarks can be saved with the PDF document to allow jumping to pages of a web site (left). Once the PDF pages are captured, pages can later be appended, web links can be viewed, and the entire site can be refreshed with a later version.

Figure 14-18. A captured web site converted to a PDF document maintains links to pages and external web sites.