Recently I was thinking about using the PDF as a blog topic. It's probably about the most common or universal file format and even to a lot of creative professionals and most lay people, it's really not widely understood. So what does P.D.F. mean - Portable Document Format (very sexy name, huh?). The PDF was developed by Adobe and is supported by it's free software; Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is probably the most common of them, (now on most computers), and Adobe Acrobat, is a powerful program that allows you to do numerous functions with PDFs.
At the most basic level, how do you create a PDF without any special software? The most common way is called Print to File. With your document open go to the File menu and select Print. Under the Printer selection menu, select Adobe PDF instead of sending it to your actual printer, and then Save. Instead of printing, your file will be saved as a PDF. For most of us, this gives us the convenience of a file format that's universal and probably compressed for easy emailing or posting to the web. However, there are many other uses for the PDF and several types.
What are some types of PDFs and what are they used for? PDFs can be saved for posting on the web, for sending thru email, but also to send out for professional commercial printing. A few of the different presets for saving PDFs are Press Quality, High Quality Print, and Smallest Size. Press Quality is the highest quality PDF preset. It's a file that you can send to commercial printers for print production, the fonts are embedded and all other critical components as well. When I worked in the publications section at FEMA, I would save books and other products for printing as Press Quality PDFs and include it with the source files for the printer to use for print production. High Quality Print is a file that will print well on printers like your desktop printer, a laser printer, and even larger production laser printers. The file prints well and doesn't compress the file all that much, but is considerably smaller than Press Quality and easier for most people to handle. The "Smallest Size" file preset is a file that is great for emailing, posting to the web, or viewing on a computer.
Adobe Acrobat Professional is the program by Adobe, that is used to edit, save, combine, export, and many more things with PDFs. As a media specialist, I use Acrobat regularly to do minor text edits, insert, export, and delete pages, re-arrange pages, create PDFs from multiple documents, crop pages, and more. I can use Acrobat to create forms with fillable fields and export PDF pages as JPG, TIFF, or other formats. This program is a staple for me and I can always use it to send a file - and I know the other person will be able to read it.
There are also work flow and commenting uses that Acrobat can be used for, so documents can be sent around and commented on, without changing the actual original document.
Well - that's all for now on PDFs. Have a great day Everyone.
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