Adobe Acrobat and pdf, the portable document format, have become a de facto standard for the distribution of documents. Adobe Acrobat is software that enables the exchange, management and printing of formatted documents regardless of computer platform. It is not a layout program like Quark Xpress or InDesign. The Adobe Acrobat file format was created to manage and distribute documents across different computer platforms (Mac, PC, UNIX) using the internet, disks or other means.

How does Acrobat work?

PDF files are generated from layout (Quark Xpress, InDesign, Word etc.) files. These applications can either save files as pdf or they can use a print driver to generate the pdf. PDF files can be high quality, all pictures and fonts can be embedded making sure that the file will display and print on a variety of computers. They can also be compressed, saving space and bandwidth.

The benefits of using Acrobat PDF files are

• files are complete
• files are compressed
• files can be viewed and printed on almost any computer with a similar result
• files can be used for high resolution printing; digital printing; online publishing

At SOS we have been using pdf files for many years to transfer artwork reliably. Showing customers how to prepare pdf files sucessfully has helped us to achieve incredible turnaround times, for example when producing the nightly research documents that have to be distributed within a couple of hours from receipt of the files.

Further information about Acrobat and pdf can be found at the Adobe website.