Section 79. Change Distiller Settings

79. Change Distiller Settings

Before You Begin

77 About Acrobat Distiller

See Also

4 Create PDFs from Microsoft Office

For standard business documents, the standard Distiller settings work just fine. For other types of documents, you can get smaller file sizes, faster printing, or better quality by choosing different default conversion settings for Distiller. Once selected, all PDF documents you create will use this new setting until you choose a different setting, so be sure to change back to the standard setting if you work primarily with regular business documents.

1.

Open Distiller From the Advanced menu in Acrobat, select Acrobat Distiller . The Distiller application launches in a window smaller than many Acrobat dialog boxes. The Distiller application window is divided into four sections: KEY TERM Job options The term used in previous versions of Distiller for default settings. These settings files still use the . joboptions suffix. Adobe PDF Settings contains a drop-down list of installed settings files, traditionally called Distiller job options . Helpful text descriptions explain each of the settings in the list. Progress shows a progress bar to let you know how far along the PostScript-to-PDF conversion process is for the current file. The Pause and Cancel Job buttons let you pause or cancel a conversion in progress. The file list shows information for each file converted since launching Distiller, including the name and size of the original PostScript or EPS file, the conversion time, and the settings used. You can resize each column of information for easier viewing. Finally, the text field at the bottom of the window shows information about the most recent conversion, including error messages if a problem was encountered .

2.

Choose a Default Setting NOTE In addition to the preset default settings, you also might need to create PDF files using a Distiller settings file from your printer (a professional person who works at a print shop, not the laser printer at the end of the hall). A custom settings file ( .joboptions ) can be added to Distiller by selecting the Add Adobe PDF Settings command from the Settings menu. In the dialog box that appears, locate and open the desired file. After you have done this, the new settings appear in the Default Settings list. You can also drag and drop the settings file into the open Distiller window and Distiller will install it into the correct location. From the Default Settings drop-down list, select the setting that is most appropriate for the type of document you want to convert to PDF. The preset default settings include High Quality Print for the best results on desktop printers PDF /A for long-term archival documents PDF /X for more reliable printing and exchange of graphic content Press Quality for the best results on commercial presses Smallest File Size for fast email transfer and online display Standard for most business documents Close Distiller when you are done.