Seattle InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

What's New With Acrobat® 6
Adobe's Lisa Forrester shared loads of info about the new versions of the Acrobat products. She gave in-depth coverage of Adobe Reader®, Acrobat Elements, Acrobat 6 Standard, and Acrobat 6 Professional. Lots of info, many options, and loads of possibilities.

A quick recap of the products:

Adobe Reader
The free PDF reader. This used to be called Acrobat Reader, but no more. (We've all had that person say,“You sent me that Adobe file, how do I open it?”) It’s a free download at Adobe.com—and they'll need it if you use the new features in Acrobat 6.

Acrobat Elements
This is a licensed product, Windows only, for 1,000 or more seats. It allows a Microsoft Office user to create PDF files straight out of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (And it includes Adobe Reader.)

Acrobat 6 Standard
This is a full-blown, new version of Acrobat. This version adds to the capabilities of Adobe Reader and the easy PDF creation options of Acrobat Elements, and then it adds many more tools. It adds PDF creation from websites and paper capture as well. You get review and commenting systems and markup and correction tools. It also includes Acrobat Distiller (native Mac OS X) and all of Distiller’s capabilities.

Acrobat 6 Professional
This is the full-blown version, with all the bells and whistles, critical for print, business, and engineering professionals. Acrobat Professional includes the capabilities and tools of all the other versions, and then adds to the mix. The business user gets forms-building tools and interactive authoring for buttons, movies, and such, as well as the PDF optimizer. PDF preflighting, separation, and transparency previews, and amazing output controls in an astounding print dialog box, are features aimed at the print production group. For engineering groups, Professional adds in a clouding commenting tool, oversized page output, and output from AutoCAD, Visio, and Project.

Tips and Tricks
Colin shared a set of tips and tricks; some were based on questions from the group. His tips included working with drop-caps, creating jumplines for a story (“continued on” and “continued from”), and some tricks toggling between tools (including the secret group selection tool).

Thanks for the Prizes!
Once again, Adobe and Adobe Press pulled out the stops and supplied a great variety of prizes. From books to software, the lucky winners went home happy.

And Thanks for the Help!
Thanks to Gene, Teresa, Sheila, and David for the help with the meeting. We couldn't do it without you. Anyone interested in helping out with the meeting, or anyone with an idea for a future topic, contact the chapter representative.

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