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Workshop
What Is A PDF And What Can It Do For You?
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is the #1 standard for sharing electronic documents as it can be read on most machines including Macintosh, Unix and Windows PC.
Adobe PDF is a universal file format, which can preserve all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed by anyone with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
PDF has a unique number of advantages:
- More and more applications, like Quark, Corel Draw or Adobe PageMaker & InDesign, have an 'export to PDF' option utilize preset Distiller settings which the staff at DFW can help you set for optimized printing of your publication.
- PDF files are device independent and can be printed on a desktop printer as well as on a high resolution imagesetter such as those used at DFW Printing. However, this does not necessarily mean that the output will be optimized for each device. A lot depends on the way the document was created and which settings in Acrobat Distiller were used to create the PDF.
- PDF supports a number of compression format structures to keep the file size down to a minimum.
Of course there are some disadvantages to PDF as well.
- PDF is a proprietary file format and although Acrobat Reader is free the creation of PDF files require the purchase of file conversion software from Adobe or other after market providers.
- PDF is geared towards visualizing and printing documents. It will not preserve the logical structure of a document and are not meant to be edited. Small changes can be made to a PDF file but it is virtually impossible to add complete blocks of text or images to an existing PDF file.
How do I create PDF files?
Creating a PDF file for printing at DFW Printing
- More and more applications, like Quark 5, Corel Draw 9 or Adobe PageMaker & InDesign, have an 'export to PDF' option utilize preset Distiller settings which the staff at DFW can help you set for optimized printing of your publication.
- For applications that do not have this option, you simply print your document to a PostScript file and then use a separate application like Adobe Acrobat Distiller to convert the PostScript file to a PDF file.
- The success or failure of PDF files depends on the creation of the PDF file. For exact information on creating PDF files utilizing your page layout software contact DFW Printing.
PDF is used more and more as a format to exchange data between applications. This is mostly due to its unique cross platform ability and its soft proofing capabilities. A single file can be created in a page layout program then emailed to an advertiser for ad proofing, printed in house to check editorial and finally uploaded electronically to DFW Printing for final output and printing. PDF files that have been properly created help to ensure that what you create is what we print allowing you to control and check your files.
This single file method means less file handling and therefore less chance for error.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is provided on most new computers and new installations of web browsers also include the free utility. Adobe provides a free Acrobat Reader that allows you to view, navigate, and print PDF files across all major computing platforms. You can download the FREE reader from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. However to create PDF files you must purchase the full version of Adobe Acrobat which includes Acrobat Distiller or a similar software from after market providers.
For more information about PDFs and how they can work for you, contact DFW Printing Company, Inc., at 817-695-0500.
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Web offset Printing
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