After a pretty simple registration process, these tools are free and integrate reasonably well into both the Acrobat 9 software and the newest version of Acrobat Reader. Acrobat 9 is the best window to a new set of online tools at.

The addition of native Flash support allows for even more interactivity inside PDF pages, and with Acrobat 9 we see the evolution of Adobe toward an online, hosted-services model.Īnd that’s where I’ll start talking about the specifics of Acrobat 9 Professional. Acrobat 9 also comes in Pro Extended ($699) and Standard ($299) versions, but Acrobat Pro is the best version for creative professionals.Īcrobat 9 Professional is also the latest Adobe release to make good on some of the promise inherent when Macromedia and Adobe merged a few years back. Adobe has added tools to Acrobat 9 (and complimentary tools through ) that start to take us from a linear creation and approval process to a more dynamic and real-time model.Īcrobat 9 Pro costs $449 registered users of earlier versions of Acrobat can upgrade for $159. I hate myself for resorting to terms like “collaboration” and “workflow,” but it must be done. Instead, the attention-getters in this version of Acrobat are about improving the way people work together on documents. This isn’t to suggest that the changes to PDF file writing and evaluation are insignificant - and I will cover those changes in the section below called “Enhanced and New Print-Production Features” - but they don’t turn heads. With Acrobat 9 Professional, and the sister Acrobat Reader 9, Adobe has left well enough alone and modestly enhanced the basics of this 15-year-old workhorse product: enhanced color conversion, Overprint preview, better preflighting, layer control, etc. Yes, print shops still need to fix or tweak customer PDFs, but for the most part the PDF files churned out by page-layout and other applications do what they’re supposed to do. And it felt like we were reaching that point with PDF. The ultimate measure of success for an open standard such as PDF is that it becomes so pervasive you no longer need anything special to make it work. Pros: PDF portfolio creation, Flash support, better color conversions, highly accurate document comparison feature, layers.Ĭons: Out of cycle with Creative Suite upgrade, it’s a big (almost 1 GB) application, and many new features will only be practical when Acrobat Readers are upgraded over time.

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