Acrobat 8 Professional New Features Create A Worthwhile Upgrade

I’ve been working with the new Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, which was released a couple weeks ago. When it was first announced it seemed that most, if not all, of the new features in the upgrade were for the corporate customers rather than creative professionals who use Acrobat for print PDF production and editing. But after getting my hands on the application itself and using it in my daily work, I’ve discovered several features within Acrobat 8 that make it a worthwhile upgrade for creative professionals and corporate users alike.

Note that, throughout this review, I’ve used some screenshots from Acrobat 8 Professional. Click on any one of them to view at full size.

THE INTERFACE

Figure 1: The “Getting Started” screen, the first thing you’ll see in Acrobat 8.

Acrobat 8 sports a radically revised user interface. The first major change is the addition of the “Getting Started” screen (see Figure 1), which offers users several functions once the application is opened. It’s reminiscent of the Project Manager that you can use when launching Microsoft Office applications. It’s an interesting addition to Acrobat: with so many more features being added to version 8, such as the PDF Package and Acrobat Connect features, it was almost necessary to include a starting point like this so users know what Acrobat is capable of, and I do think that of all the CS2 applications Acrobat is the one least understood and with the most features simply unknown by creative professionals—such as form building, flexible review capabilities and multimedia, which have all been available for some time now.

But still, I am curious to know how many printers and print designers use Acrobat for more than just cranking out PDFs and maintaining quality control as they go to press. There are a lot of users in the creative professional community who may see the “Getting Started” screen when they first open the application, then look immediately for the way to get rid of it—and it is quite easy to do, just click the check box on the screen. Those who do so will miss out on all of Acrobat’s power and capabilities, but most of them won’t care—as long as Acrobat continues to execute the work they’ve always done with it, they’ll be satisfied. One thing Acrobat product manager Lonn Lorenz said that struck me is this: Acrobat offers so many tools for so many kinds of customers that users often use just the toolsets they need for their work. For that reason, I think the “Getting Started” screen will be a hindrance for some users; however, I also think there’s plenty of new features in Acrobat 8 that the “Getting Started” screen will introduce you to.

Figure 2: The interface has changed dramatically since version 7.

Once you do get beyond the “Getting Started” screen, you will notice Acrobat 8’s interface (see Figure 2) is quite different from its previous versions:

• The usual black-on-white color scheme becomes white-on-grays
• The tabs (Pages, Attachments, Bookmarks) are replaced by icons across the side of the screen

The white-on-gray color palette is familiar to anyone working with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom or any of Apple’s prosumer applications, and I expect it to continue influencing Adobe’s decisions when it comes to interface design: for example, I’d be surprised if CS3 did not sport the new look in 2007. It’s a modern look and it really emphasizes the document instead of the usual “chrome”. I’m not sure about the icons—it seems a lot more straightforward if things were back in plain English, but the icons are understandable enough. There are a few other tweaks to the interface as well, including one that will be welcome to print professionals: the measurements at the lower-left of the screen show up when the mouse is in the lower-left quadrant of the screen, rather than when the mouse is right on top of it as in Acrobat 7. I’ve heard people asking for the measurements to return for some time now (back in Acrobat 6, they were always displayed) and it hasn’t come back as before, but it is easier to view them in version 8. I think it’s a welcome change—though I still look for the measurements all the time.

COLLABORATION WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

Figure 3: Acrobat’s next killer application: Acrobat Connect.

The killer feature for Acrobat 8 is Acrobat Connect (see Figure 3), which used to be Macromedia Breeze before Adobe bought Macromedia last year. Breeze was a technology that allowed online real-time collaboration through a combination of live chat, video and collaborative file viewing. Adobe’s decision to roll it into Acrobat, an application that is all about sharing files and information, was a no-brainer. Acrobat Connect allows groups of users to work with files and collaborate online in real-time, and it’s not only useful to work on files together but also to present materials and information to entire groups—basically anything that a group can do in a real meeting. I think this is a major leap forward for those who work with PDF and digital information in general. Acrobat Connect is a service that must be purchased on top of any Acrobat licenses, but for major organizations and companies this will be money well spent.

The other major advance in online collaboration is shared review (see Figure 4), another feature of Acrobat 8. In previous versions of Acrobat, the application was able to send PDF files for review via e-mail or create a browser-based review, but it was never collaboration in the true sense of the word. Whether you shared your PDF via e-mail or a web browser, the recipient was alone in his or her review, commenting and return of the document. Now the review can be shared online with Acrobat 8—multiple users can review and comment on a PDF file, and it’s in real-time so it is truly collaboration.

Figure 4: Shared reviews make it easier to collaborate.

Again, I wonder how many print professionals will use both Acrobat Connect and shared reviews:

• Designers often work with clients who have a hard time opening a PDF, let alone participating in a real-time online shared review or Acrobat Connect
• Some users are more content to pass along PDF files as they always have, rather than learn new techniques with Acrobat
• As always, new technology like this will take some time to become known by everyone in the industry

That last point is very important and worth considering. Five years ago, sending PDF files to a printer for high-quality print output was a laughable notion—at least by old-school designers who were happy collecting their QuarkXPress 4 files for output. Now it’s the norm, and collecting for output is the exception. It will be no different with technologies like Acrobat Connect—but it will take some time to adopt, and time for others to figure out how to make it work.

PDF PACKAGES ARE EASY AND USEFUL

The PDF package is a new concept introduced by Acrobat 8 to bundle PDF files together. It’s always been a cinch to insert a PDF’s pages into another and save as one PDF, but that meant applying only one security setting to everything. A PDF package keeps PDF files separate, with their own security settings. This is an important advancement for corporations and organizations with a lot of PDF files to keep together and yet maintain their individual security settings. For creative professionals, the PDF package’s major benefit is something else entirely: it seems that you can package not only PDF files but InDesign files, HTML and image files such as JPEG, Photoshop (PSD) and TIFF. This becomes very valuable for creative professionals because the native files used in print layouts are often these files exactly: an InDesign file plus its image files. Acrobat 8 converts these to PDF during the packaging process, essentially building a highly portable package for your print jobs! It defeats the purpose of the native package but allows you to contain separate elements of the job in a convenient package.

Figure 5: The PDF Package dialog box.

One feature of the PDF packaging process did surprise me: it does not apply the PDF presets that are used throughout Acrobat and CS2. Let’s assume you are a designer who is always producing PDF files that conform to the PDF/X-1a specification. The closest thing to PDF/X-1a in the PDF Package dialog box (see Figure 5) is “Larger File Size,” one of only three presets. These settings do work in tandem with Acrobat’s “Convert to PDF” preferences, so you can specify PDF presets that way (for example, you can set InDesign files to convert to PDF/X-1a whenever they are encountered. However, I was surprised by the discrepancy, especially when CS2 does a great job of sharing settings and presets among its member applications. The PDF Package interface is one place where Adobe’s consistency falls somewhat short.

PREFLIGHT AND REPAIR YOUR PDF FILES

Figure 6: Acrobat’s preflighting tools keep getting better and better.

Preflighting PDF files has always been an awkward task when done with Acrobat: in previous versions, the interface was cumbersome and confusing, and the results were nearly impossible to comprehend. Acrobat 7 took some steps to make it easier to preflight, and Acrobat 8 continues that trend (see Figure 6) and adds a great new feature: the ability to repair and edit PDF files for common specifications (PDF/X-1a, for example) and pitfalls (hairlines, RGB color). I’ve done some preflighting with Acrobat 8 and I find it to be pretty easy to use: the profiles you can preflight your PDF file with are easy to understand, repair is easy, and the results are fairly straightforward. I compare the process to verifying and repairing a disk with Mac OS X’s Disk Utility: run it, then check the results at the end.

Note that Acrobat 8’s repair abilities don’t really compare to what you’ll find in products like Enfocus’ Pitstop: if you need to do extensive editing of PDF files, Acrobat 8 will probably not cover your needs.

BOOKLET PRINTING: A GREAT FEATURE NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT

In my first review of Acrobat 8, which was based solely on the first news from Adobe, I couldn’t see much reason for creative professionals to upgrade since many features were very useful for corporate documents but not really for creative work. After working with the application itself I’ve changed my stance because of features like booklet printing, which was not mentioned in the early news. It seems that when printing a multi-page PDF file, Acrobat 8 can impose the pages for you and output printer’s spreads for binding (see Figure 7). As a designer who had to recently waste time imposing multiple proofs for a client, Acrobat 8’s booklet printing is very useful and timely—and not well-publicized.

Figure 7: With Booklet Printing, impose your pages without moving them around yourself or using plug-ins!

WORTH BUYING, IF…

Acrobat 8 is definitely a different application than Acrobat 7, Acrobat 6 and Acrobat 5: it has made great strides in preflight, collaboration and review as well as print production. I think the best upgrade for creative professionals is still Acrobat 7, which brought us the Print Production tools, but Acrobat 8 is still worth buying…if you appreciate cutting-edge technology and look constantly for new technology to make work easier for you and your clients. Acrobat 8 is a worthwhile upgrade for anyone, whether corporate officer or creative professional, but it may take a paradigm shift for its new offerings to be widely used. I think it will happen; however, PDF took around five years to be widely adopted. Acrobat 8 may be the start of a similar shift in the way technology is used for communication and collaboration.

Acrobat 8 Professional
Adobe Systems
$449 full version/$159 upgrade
www.adobe.com