Working with PDFs that make your life a living hell...

Adobe Acrobat

Working with PDFs that make your life a living hell...

There are certain tasks that have to be attended to when setting up a PDF that will go to a printer For example when a job is bid for Print there are 

many factor that have to be taken into consideration. If the job is two color or three  or full there are different parameters that have to be done. 

Today my notes focus on two color jobs... 

A. Changing colors in Acrobat— Advanced>Print Production>Output Preview

This allows us to see the color swatches that are embedded within the PDF file.

B. To Edit the PDF (whole)— Tools>Advanced Editing Tools>Object Touch-up Tool

This needed to complete this function. Hold down the Control Key on the Keyboard 

(to get the RT click menu) on this menu scroll down to Edit Document; and illustrator opens to edit.

***Note: Remember to save after each change.

Printing Separations is a very helpful thing to do, because if anything shows up on the CMYK plates your SOL! 

You have to go in and delete any and all the objects that show up on that plate. 

*** Note: One of the things that were happening to me as I was editing the PDF, some of the photos that I was adjusting were

not letting me save any changes to the document, so We saved it to the Desktop as a TIFF and Deleted the photo in 

Acrobat, then place the TIFF in the PDF. 

Use Advanced Editing Tools>Hold Down the Control Key>Place Image>Select TIFF.

***Note: If Objects are still showing up in the CMYK Plates  during the printing of the separations, Check the Illustrator 

document  to see if it was converted to Gray Scale.

Edit>Colors>Convert to Gray Scale

File > Document Color Mode RGB (Convert to CMYK) SAVE

Changing a color PDF to Gray scale:

FILE>Print>Printer: Adobe PDF 8.0, press the ADVANCED button output: Gray Scale>Print

INDESIGN— To Place a PDF with out breaking it apart manually

Window>Automate> Scripts> Java Scripts- scroll to Place Multi Page PDF

WORD-—Now we also work in Word, To make a PDF from Word.

File> Print; at the top of the dialogue box you have to choose ADOBE PDF 8.0; Under presets the third place to scroll 

you scroll to Printer Features and Make Resolution 300DPI -PRINT