PDF Presentation

The PDF Presentation command lets you build very simple slide shows with the Presentation option, or multipage PDFs with the Multi-Page Document option. Both options build a multipage PDF with one image per page, but the Presentation option does a little extra work, setting up a transition between pages and making sure that the PDF opens in full screen mode. I almost always use the Presentation optionsee Figure 9-14.

Figure 9-14. PDF Presentation

PDF Presentation is fairly limited. It doesn't let you add captions, or copyright notices, or anything else to the image, and it only lets you set a single transition that's used between all the images. It does, however, do the grunt work of getting all the images into a PDF. If you own Acrobat 7.0 Professional, you can add text there and finesse the transitions on an image-by-image basis. The PDF Presentation dialog box also gives you one last opportunity to change the image order by dragging the items in the list, but this is a task that's better done in Bridge, where you can at least see the thumbnails.

Once you've made your choices in the PDF Presentation dialog box and you've clicked Save, you're prompted for a filename and destination for the PDF; then the PDF Save Options dialog box appears. If you're using PDF Presentation to create a simple slide show, most of these options are irrelevant. It may be conceptually interesting that you can create a multipage PDF/X1a:2001 document directly from raw files, but it's hard to envisage a reason for doing so! Here are the settings that matter for slide show use.

• General tab. The only useful preset for slide show use is Smallest File Size, which may apply heavier JPEG compression than you want. Otherwise, leave Standard set to None, and choose your desired level of compatibility from the Compatibility menu. If in doubt, choose Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3)it's the lowest common denominator.

• Compression tab. PDF Presentation uses the last-used Camera Raw workflow settings. If you need to downsample, you can choose downsampling options herethe differences for on-screen use between the various downsampling methods are quite subtle. You can also choose a compression method and quality setting in this tab. The option to convert 16-bit/channel images to 8-bit/channel doesn't always seem reliable, so if you want the slide show to be compatible with the largest number of PDF readers, you should probably set the Camera Raw workflow settings to produce 8-bit/channel images before launching PDF presentation.

• Output tab. The only relevant options in the Output tab are the color ones. Choose No Conversion if you want the PDF in the output space specified in Camera Raw's workflow settings. If you want it in some other space, choose Convert to Destination, then choose the space you want from the Destination menu. I always recommend choosing Include Destination Profiledespite the wording, this option dictates whether or not the PDF contains a profile.

• Security. The security options only work inside Adobe products. If you set any level of security, you need the password to open the document in Photoshop. Once it's open in Photoshop, it's completely editablethe restrictions apply only when the document is opened in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. Macintosh users can open the PDF in the Mac's Preview application with no restrictions, so the security is largely illusory. (Perhaps the tab should be labeled "False sense of security.")

PDF Presentation tends to emphasize the disconnect in user interface and terminology between Acrobat and The Rest of the Adobe Universe. It has become massively more complex though admittedly more powerful in Photoshop CS2, so if you want to use it to build slide shows (which it does quite well), find the settings that work for you and save them as a preset.