Adobe's document standard is an essential part of the computing landscape. PDF stands for "Portable Document Format", and its primary achievement is to preserve document layout and appearance so that it looks right and prints correctly wherever it is viewed. Anyone can read a PDF using the free Acrobat reader, but with the full version of Acrobat you can create and modify documents, encrypt and secure them and take advantage of a host of additional features. Acrobat 6.0 Professional has an enhanced user interface along with several important new features. It's easier than ever to convert documents and a neat new feature is the ability to combine several source documents into a single PDF. It's also possible to scan documents directly into Acrobat. Once they're converted, you can touch up the content and add interactive forms or multimedia elements.
Acrobat 6.0 Professional has a greatly improved system for reviewing and commenting, so that a PDF can be e-mailed or posted to a Web location where others can suggest changes. Acrobat 6.0 Standardcan gather all the comments into a new document and each change can be approved or rejected.
Another vital area is security: a PDF can be password-protected or digitally signed to authenticate its content. You can also add trusted certificates to the document, enabling selected individuals to make amendments. A PDF can be exported in a variety of formats and you can create special versions for reading on a Palm or Pocket PC. Accessibility is also a key issue and Acrobat 6.0 Professional includes automatic scrolling, a read-out-loud feature and advice on creating accessible documents.
The preflight and preview features in Acrobat 6.0 Professional are a must-have for those working in the print and design industry. Preflight analyses a document to check its validity for print production. Documents are validated against a profile, specifying rules such as the minimum or maximum resolution of bitmaps, whether fonts are embedded and which types of colour or page elements are permitted. Profiles are fully editable, and you can also test for PDF/X compliance, where PDF/X is an ISO standard for exchanging PDF documents.
Acrobat 6.0 Professional also supports colour management using ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles. You can view colour proofs on-screen and preview print separations. There is also control over transparency flattening, which is where overlapping transparent objects are converted into separate pieces.
Another aspect of Acrobat is especially important for technical drawing. Acrobat 6.0 Professional supports layers in documents converted from Visio or AutoCAD. These drawing packages typically create large documents and there are special navigation and printing tools to make them easier to work with. Many applications can now export in PDF format, with or without Acrobat installed, but for optimised output and to take full advantage of the format's features Acrobat is highly recommended. --Tim Anderson
