How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0
reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Author: by Doug Sahlin McGraw-Hill Osborne Media McGraw-Hill Osborne http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/getbook.php?isbn=0072257881&template=osborne Released: March 28, 2005 [English] $25 USD, $34 CND, £15 GBP, 21€ EUR ISBN: 0072257881 Audience: Users who want a thorough from the ground-up introduction to Adobe Acrobat 7.0. PC user are more like to directly benefit from the excellent book, for Macintosh users it will take a little bit of extra work. With coverage of Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional editions, this hands-on resource will help you take full advantage of paperless publishing using the now ubiquitous PDF format. Major Strengths: This easy-to-follow, and well illustrated guide shows you how to generate Adobe PDF files that retain the look and feel of the original documents, share PDFs, initiate and participate in PDF document reviews, and prepare PDFs for print or the Web. Weakness: Once again Macintosh user are left behind. As one unnamed review noted on the Internet, this book should have been titled How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 for Windows Users. At least Sahlin’s earlier book on Acrobat 6 did not pretend. How to Do Everything with Adobe® Acrobat® 6.0 (Windows) by Doug Sahlin, ISBN: 0072229462. Where appropriate the instructions in the book was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.3 Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies, |
for Mac Users
for Windows Users
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Publisher’s Overview
“Create and distribute PDF (Portable Document Format) files using Adobe Acrobat 7.0. This easy-to-follow guide shows you how to generate Adobe PDF files that retain the look and feel of the original documents, share PDFs, initiate and participate in PDF document reviews, and prepare PDFs for print or the Web. You’ll also learn to develop interactive forms, secure your documents, and create PDFs from Microsoft Office and other authoring applications. With coverage of Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional editions, this hands-on resource will help you take full advantage of the premier paperless publishing and collaboration solution.”
Review Introduction
I have taught my self the use of Acrobat, having adopted it at version 3.x. For working with PDF, files it and the shareware PDFpen have been among the most heavily used applications on my hard drive. http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/.
Indeed PDFpen augments and completes the text-associated features on the Macintosh that Adobe appears to have left out. With respect to my use, these PDF oriented products get equal time with GraphicConverter, FileMaker Pro, Toast, and Eudora. Only MS Word and Safari are more heavily used. Of these applications, my ability to use Acrobat frankly put me in wimp mode.
Having reviewed the excellent [4 macCs] Adobe Acrobat 7 Tips and Tricks: The 150 Best by Donna L. Baker [macCompanion February 2006, Volume 4 Issue 2], I was left with the feeling that I needed to start at a more entry-level and learn the program from the bottom up. This would if I worked at it enhance my ability to work with PDF by at least an order of magnitude. A secondary benefit would be, in the long-run, saving me both time and lowering my stress and frustration levels. Do I hate feeling dumb! Therefore, I checked out the Internet for available Acrobat 7 books and found the description on the McGraw-Hill Osborne Media website interesting enough to order the book. Wonderful, this appeared to be a book that was multi-platform in scope.
Other Considerations — Other books seemed either aimed at a more knowledgeable audience, or had not been deemed excellent by in published reviews. This review shares both my joy and frustration with what I found in Doug Sahlin’s book
I don’t remember whether I received a manual Adobe sent with my Acrobat Professional 7, but neither could I find a PDF formatted User Manual. Am I having a senior moment? I have over the years used the product made extensive use of the HELP files, but that is a more narrowly focused option — Alas, I can’t learn complex software from a HELP file.
I found this book easy to get my arms around and valuable at rapidly helping me understand and use many of Acrobat Professional’s rich features. The well-illustrated book gives me a broader and clearer understanding of what Adobe Acrobat is all about and how to use it more effectively in my daily Macin’ around. Much to my surprise, I didn’t even have to unlearn any bad habits, only to learn how to do what I needed to do to PDF files in a more straightforward and simpler manner.
The Book Itself
I found the book itself, for the most part, easy to read, understand and full of good illustrations. Although “grey” graphics are not my thing most of the information, shown as PC examples was useable on my Macintosh. From the point of view of my needs both as a nuclear waste management consultant, and macCompanion reviewer, the meat was all in Chapters 1-10. Others who live in a corporate environment that uses PDF files as a document production tool, or those of you who create larger multimedia rich documents, will find the rest of the book a must read.
One of the things I like most about the author, is his approach to explaining the concepts. He manages to introduce key concepts in a way that made sense and then carried them through with real examples (especially the Basics of Editing PDF Documents section).
I found this book easier to use then the Hints and Tips book referenced earlier, because it allowed me to get my arms around the program’s rich individual features. This book gives a broader and clearer understanding of what Adobe Acrobat is and how to use it. Much to my surprise, I didn’t even have to unlearn any bad habits, only to learn how to do what I needed to do to PDF files in a more straightforward and simpler manner.
The book overall, focuses on how to:
· Read and search PDF documents
· Convert virtually any document to PDF
· Capture documents from a scanner, digital camera, or Web page
· Create bookmarks, links, navigation menus, and use thumbnails
· Add digital signatures and document security
· Optimize documents for print, the Web, or other purposes
· Review, edit, and annotate PDFs in multi-author environments
· Create a searchable index
· Create PDF forms using Adobe Designer
· Add multimedia elements to PDFs
However, you knew that, didn’t you? Not all the information the book provides was useful to me. At times, the material was not relevant to my present needs and working environment. Alternatively, what the author shared could not be easily implemented in Acrobat 7 Macintosh. Of course, there is a third possibility; that I simply did not get it… scratch that!
As mentioned in the beginning of this review, it is not easy learn to use Acrobats features. So, a muted hooray for How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0.
Kudos and more Kudos
Creating PDFs — On a Macintosh computer one has a number of alternative ways to, given that Adobe Acrobat is loaded, to capture information to create PDF files. One that most user find easy is to use the operating system’s print to PDF. A second, if you are a MS Office owner is to use the PDF maker buttons that Acrobat installs in those applications. Indeed, before reading this book, those were the only methods I know, other than scanning to PDF, something that created only an image not an editable postscript type file. However, whenever I used the Print to PDF feature from a website or other source, I'd lose my active links. Doug’s book explains why. Not only does creating a PDF from a website, using Acrobat preserve more of the web sites functionality (read that as active links) but it seems the PDF is more functional with respect to find operations. Oh, and to allow me to reset active links in PDFs created without them, there’s information provided on just that subject.
Scan to PDF – I own an HP ScanJet 8250 with sheet feeder with which I capture paper document to PDFs for electronic storage. Using the provided but flawed HP software requires me to select the format of the scanned image each time I scan a document to file. By scanning directly from Acrobat, as described in this book, I save time and have needed to do less diddling around.
Editing Text in Acrobat Documents — Thanks Doug, I know better understand the limitations of the touchup Text Tool. I get around these limitations with PDFpen, but knowing the limitations of Acrobat, allows me to decide between tweaking material in a PDF or fixing problems by going back to MS Word.
Acronym List — There is so much alphabet soup in this document that having an acronym list would have been a great service to readers. The book is aimed at non-experts, isn’t it?
Highlighter Feature — Now why didn’t I find this, all these years, when using Acrobat? I found I could even use it on recipe files or hints. [Chapter 10]
Major Help Needed for Macintosh Users
I am deeply troubled by this book but I’m not sure whether my problem is with the Author or the Publisher. If the boo had been entitled How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 for Windows Users as was his earlier book on Acrobat 6, I would have read it avidly. I have plenty of experience translating manuals or books for PC versions of software, to extract methods that work on my Macintosh. Nevertheless, is not so labeled, and therein lies my problem.
I found this book easier to use then the Hints and Tips book referenced earlier, because it allowed me to get my arms around the program’s rich individual features. Doug Sahlin’s book gives a broader and clearer understanding of what Adobe acrobat is and how to use it. Much to my surprise, I didn’t even have to unlearn any bad habits, only to learn how to do what I needed to do to PDF files in a more straightforward and simpler manner.
It is singularly obvious that the author, or anyone else associated with the book, had checked out the detailed methods described on a Macintosh computer.
So I ask, was a multiplatform pitch your idea, or did your editor toss in the trivial Macintosh related comments to enhance sales? If its the editor or publisher, my apologies in advance, Doug, for the tone of some of these comments.
Indeed, beyond telling us repeatedly that a Macintosh contextual menu (but only if one uses a one button mouse) can be accessed by control clicking, there is little or nothing in this book to directly teach a Macintosh user. The book doesn’t even tell us the differences between preferences and settings; the later for the most part is a PC term.
Okay to be fair, in a few places we are informed that a method is PC only. There is an appendix that deals with one-key shortcuts (that I couldn’t get to work in Macintosh OS X Tiger). Alas, this otherwise outstanding book is of little direct help to the rest of us, who would like to become better users of Acrobat Standard or Professional. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that for the first 10 chapters of the book, I tested many of the methods that Mr. Sahlin describes on my Macintosh. With minor differences due to the Mac OS X interface, they work just fine. However, how many of our readers, who aren’t either compulsives or book reviewers will take the trouble.
There are many ways an author, as many have done, can share their knowledge about a program such as Acrobat 7 with users of both Macintosh and PC platforms. At the very least, an author can add icons in the margins of all applicable sections and subsections that indicate that the method is directly applicable to the Macintosh platform. Knowing that something is possible, at least will encourage us to try to translate the Windoze to our Macs. At best, an author can provide both as PC and Macintosh specific write up, perhaps as many have done alternating between them where the interface differences are large.
Other Minor Discomforts
Acrobat Distiller — I could neither get distiller to work or even access and customize the conversion setting on my system. I was, however, able to get some of the desired enhancements, e.g., better than standard settings) when printing through the Macintosh print dialog box. [Chapter 10, Pages 328 ff.]
Restore Keyboard Commands — Despite the information in the Appendix, his did not work on my Macintosh system.
Create PDF Files from MS Office Software — Hmm… Where are the Macintosh versions of office system listed? Can someone give me a hint please?
Enhancing PDF Maker Performance in MS Office Documents — Sahlin is strangely quiet about whether this can be done for Entourage; you know the Macintosh equivalent of Outlook.
Discussions on Dealing with Graphics and Photoshop Elements — Since acrobat’s graphics handling features can be enhanced with working with images in Photoshop Elements [PSE], I would have like to have a seen a bit more information on this subject. Yes, I’m aware many folks use Photoshop, but many of the PSE features are a subset of that more feature rich application. I found the information about enhancing graphics, to be imbedded in a final PDF, weak.
The Acrobat Touchup Tool — The author neglects [e.g., Chapter 2, Page 47] to tell us that the Touchup Object tool is great for getting rid of bits and pieces of a capture web-page image that can not be readily cropped away. It’s a bit tricky but in combination with the keyboards modifier keys you can effectively prune away unwanted information.
Acrobat Converter Advance Options (Print command related) — Someone seems to have stolen these features from my computer.
Something I Want To Do That Wasn’t Covered — As many readers know, I download recipes, in PDF format, and at time add graphics to illustrate them. Now it is easy to add a graphic to a PDF file, what is not easy is to make the space for it so that the graphic doesn’t cover up the text. At times just shrinking the size of the image does makes the image too small. I do that by shifting text, where space if available at the bottom of a page in a PDF document, to make room for the new image. I kept hoping that there was a secrete way to wrap text around am image like I do in MS Word.
In Closing
With the caveats I mentioned, I highly recommend this book for anyone who is either new to Acrobat or is looking to extend their knowledge of Acrobat's features. If you're new to Acrobat, or looking to increase your knowledge, this is the book for you. It's easy to read, and the well-illustrated information is presented in a logical manner.
If even casually studied, by using the index to select the feature of interest, PC users will learn how to easily:
· Use and compare various strategies and software options for making PDF files.
· Use Adobe Acrobat to prepare files for print and non-print output specifications.
· Use Adobe Acrobat to exchange, edit, annotate, and modify files.
· Use Adobe Acrobat to establish hyperlinks within a PDF file for interactive media purposes.
· Use Adobe Acrobat to add forms data fields to a PDF file.
With the exception of where Acrobat 7 does not support the described efforts and with much more effort, due to lack of Macintosh specifics, users will also meet those goals. However, it will take more dedication. I expect this book, as my Acrobating needs evolve will remain a very helpful reference book.
Rating — 4.5 macC’s for Windows users; 3.0 macC’s for Macintosh users. With a little bit of Macintosh related annotation, this could have been a great book for the rest of us.
