Adobe Acrobat

Over the past few years, the PDF (portable document format) has become the defacto standard for rich media documents. Developed by software giant Adobe, PDFs are a convenient way to store and share documents electronically, and their program Acrobat 9 Professional is one of the most powerful ways of creating PDFs.

So how does Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional work? In terms of layout, the program shares a few similarities with Microsoft Word of the Microsoft office small business edition 2003, another ubiquitous document format. However, unlike Word, Adobe Acrobat has much better support for rich media content such as images, and has more robust graphical layout features.

Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional also has support for vector graphics, which you can use to scale PDFs to any size without losing image quality, and Acrobat ties in nicely with the other programs of the CS4 Design Premium Suite to create a tightly integrated graphical design workflow for graphics professionals.

Another benefit of Acrobat 9 Professional, is that the PDFs it generates are ideally suited for printing. PDF documents are designed specifically to preserve the formatting of documents, so that what you see on the screen is exactly what you get when you print it out on actual paper. In fact, most printers these days use PDFs as the default way to transfer and store data.

Beyond printing, Acrobat 9 can add features that make PDFs more interactive as well. With Adobe Acrobat, users can insert hyperlinks into a PDF document, to connect a PDF document to other documents on the web. For sensitive documents, or commercial ebooks, Adobe Acrobat 9 also has the ability to password protect PDF documents so that only those with the right password can read and open them.

So what are some of the new features in Acrobat 9 Professional? For starters, Adobe Acrobat now has the ability to translate paper documents into electronic PDFs using OCR (optical character recognition) technology. All you have to do is scan the document in, and Acrobat generates a PDF. Acrobat 9 also has improved features for working across multiple documents, and adds a ton of features for collaborative document creation as well.

Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional also has greater support for rich media such as 3D models and CAD documents, and has the added features of forms, which can be used to make PDF documents interactive, and facilitate information collection in much the same way as forms on the web.

Whatever your PDF needs, Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional is one of the best tools for generating PDFs. If you’re looking to create a rich media document that can be reproduced faithfully in print, and includes interactive features such as hyperlinks and forms, look no further than the trusty PDF.

-Takeshi, ex-shopping blogger and professional adobe acrobat