Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

  An edited version of this article (with illustrations!) appears in the September, 2008 edition of PrintAction. Subscriptions are available here http://www.printaction.com/default.php/shop/subscribe/subscribe.


When I think about Adobe Acrobat, now having entered its Version 9, I'm reminded of my nieces and nephew as they've grown.

I remember them as newborns, cute and full of promise, but as able to annoy as to delight. Then, a few years old, beginning to communicate; their promise starting to become more fully realized. From then until adulthood they wandered through numerous phases, some intriguing and delightful, others disappointing and worrisome. At times they seemed gawky and their bodies out of proportion. Just as quickly they would return to more elegant human form before once again growing a foot taller in a year or several pounds heavier. Finally the children became adults, and the promise of the newborn could be appreciated.

Adobe Acrobat has evolved in so many ways like a growing child. Version 1 was released by Adobe on June 15, 1993, initially for Macintosh only. Software versions offer us no real clue as to a product's age. Acrobat is now just over 15 years old, but I believe that Version 9 marks its emergence into true adulthood.

I was not keen on the younger teen version of Acrobat, Version 8, which I also reviewed in PrintAction. There I referenced the 10 reasons Adobe offered for an upgrade from V7, noting that "every one of these features is already available in Acrobat 7, in most cases from Adobe itself, in two cases from third-parties. What the upgrade affords is some additional robustness in most of the stated features, rather than new features per se."

Ah, but the elegant Version 9 brings so many new features to the product (and some truly notable improvements to existing features) that I'm proud to be an owner of the product. Yes, adulthood at last.

An Overview, as Required

One thing that drives me increasingly crazy in dealing with software packages (and Windows Vista) is the proliferation of versions of what you might imagine should be a fairly straightforward product. There are four variants in Acrobat 9. The first of course is the free Acrobat Reader, which has two new features, and three enhanced features. Next is the $299 (US), $99 to upgrade, Acrobat 9 Standard (Adobe now offers only U.S. pricing for Canadian customers) which Adobe tactfully describes as "ideal for office workers of any skill level," and I would rephrase as "ideal for office workers with no skill level." This version will be of no interest to readers of this website. The correct version for folks concerned with using PDF as a tool for foolproof print production is the $449 ($159 to upgrade) Acrobat 9 Pro. This one has got all the prime beef features that make Acrobat 9 an essential upgrade. (It also has a lot of other intriguing non-graphic arts features that I'll highlight but not explore in depth).

Finally there is the deluxe $699 ($229 to upgrade) Acrobat 9 Pro Extended. Extended? Extended to what or to whom? Apparently the target markets are people who want to create very fancy presentations in PDF, including lots of Flash and 3D and separately the CAD (computer-aided design) market, which has been on Adobe's radar for some time. CADs will now be able to convert both 2D and 3D images into PDF and also "create PDF maps by importing geospatial files that retain metadata and coordinates." (Don't ask me: it's on the website.) Some readers will be interested in this premium version.

An important feature of Acrobat 9 (all versions), easily forgotten (I'm already used to it) is that it launches 2 to 3 times faster than previous versions. That by itself nearly justifies the upgrade!

Adobe attempts to simplify your understanding of the features of each version at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html.

And I must not forget that Adobe has also launched the (quite stable) beta of Acrobat.com, described as "a set of online services -- file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing - you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others." The description continues: "It's free, so sign up now," to which this jaded analyst must again amend to "It's free, or at least until we get so many people dependant on it that we can charge for the service, so sign up now, while the going is good."

I'm jaded about the come-on, but not about the service. This represents one of Adobe's first forays into that world alternately referred to as "cloud computing," "software as service" and a few other terms designed to leave you wondering what's going on out there. As the collaborative sharing and storage of documents becomes ever-increasingly in demand this will be the site to go to when working with PDF files between different participants in the workflow chain. If you've not yet deduced the URL, it's www.acrobat.com. Have a look. After all it's free.

Prepress Schizophrenia

Long-time Acrobat aficionados will recall that when John Warnock, then co-CEO of Adobe, introduced the Acrobat concept under the code-name Carousel, he was not thinking of a tool to make life easier for designers, publishers and their service providers. (Gene Gable offers a fascinating overview of the history of Acrobat and Carousel (and its first code-name "Camelot") at CreativePro.com (http://www.creativepro.com/blog/scanning-around-with-gene-from-camelot-carousel-acrobat)). As Gene notes, Warnock sought to "solve a fundamental problem that confronts today's companies. The problem is concerned with our ability to communicate visual material between different computer applications and systems."

No mention of prepress.

The product got off to a very rocky start. It faced numerous competitors, including Common Ground from No Hands Software, WorldView from Interleaf and Envoy from WordPerfect. But probably its biggest problem was that Adobe insisted on charging for $50 for Acrobat Reader. I remember Jonathan Seybold publicly warning John Warnock that this was a strategic error, but Adobe persisted for some time thereafter.

Meanwhile the graphic arts industry cottoned on to Acrobat and PDF and, I would say, saved its bacon.

In the dark early days of desktop publishing, the top two problems faced by graphic arts service providers upon receipt of customer files were missing fonts and missing graphics (which is not to say there weren't a host of other challenges, but these two were the major problem in most jobs received). Acrobat strongly encouraged designers to embed fonts and graphics. Sure, the graphics might still be low-res RGB junk, but it was an improvement over not having the files at all. And, as it later turned out, embedding fonts could be a breach of copyright. But the workflow improvement over the "collect for output" approach in page layout software was so dramatic that the publishing industry began a full embrace of Acrobat and PDF long before the intended audience of electronic document producers even knew what Acrobat might do for them.

Still Adobe was fixated on its intended audience of emerging electronic publishers, and tended in numerous versions to slight the graphic arts community by failing to enhance graphic arts features in Acrobat and PDF. Third-party software companies, most notably Enfocus and Callas, were left to fill the gap by providing PDF preflight functionality and then some.

With Acrobat 9 there appears to me to be no doubt that Adobe has finally received the message loud and clear: whatever Acrobat means to the electronic document community, graphics and prepress are also a vital market for the product. As a result the required functionality for most graphic arts firms is now fully-embedded in the product, presumably to the detriment of some of the firms that grew by augmenting Acrobat's shortcomings in this key market (Callas however is the anointed licensed provider of many of these features in Acrobat today).

Going Deeper into Acrobat's Prepress Functionality

As mentioned above, Adobe for some years fobbed off really useful prepress features to third-party vendors. With Acrobat 9 Pro, there aren't many scraps left on the table from which these vendors can earn an income. When you look closely at the menu below, I think you'll have to agree that Adobe is finally covering the prepress waterfront. And these simple menu choices only hint at some of the riches inside.

Adobe offers its own "Top 10 Features for Print Professionals," and it is indeed an impressive list:

• Intelligent Overprint Preview (enhanced)
• Enhanced Output Preview with Object Inspector (enhanced)
• Enhanced color conversion, including converting RGB and rich blacks to solid black (enhanced)
• Support for the latest PDF industry standards
• Enhanced preflight checking and corrections, including embedding a preflight audit trail (significantly enhanced)
• New layers controls for assigning objects to layers and importing PDF as a layer on a specific page (new)
• Built-in Pantone color libraries (new)
• Document Comparison (significantly enhanced)
• Text editing enhancements (enhanced)
• Print dialogue enhancements (enhanced)

I would add to this:

• PDF standards verification (new)
• Support for all relevant PDF variants (significantly enhanced)
• Improved PDF workflows with PDF Print Engine 2 (new/enhanced)

While in Acrobat 8 the word "enhanced" didn't hold a lot of water, the word takes on its rightful meaning in Acrobat 9 Pro.

I think you'll marvel at the "enhanced" preflight capabilities in this new version. There are a plethora of useful predefined profiles, and of course, additional profiles can be defined. You've got the option merely to analyze the problems, or analyze and fix the problems at the same time.

There are two nifty additional preflight features available from this point onward. The first is to have the software take you directly to where the problem lies (or at a minimum suggest a fix). Second, as you'll once again see at the bottom of the dialog box, the software supports the Ghent Working Group's standard for embedding an audit trail, which makes it plain to subsequent users of the file that the file was preflighted and what results were returned.

There is so much more to discover in the enhanced prepress features in Acrobat 9 Pro that I'll advise you now to set some time aside to learn them fully. Increased prepress efficiency will be your reward.

Is That All There Is?

Aside from the prepress schizophrenia Adobe has exhibited on and off over the years, Dr. McIlroy points to Adobe's ongoing schizophrenia while trying to help "creative professionals" and at the same time the service providers who are such an essential link in the overall creative workflow. In the era of the Web, creative professionals are a more diverse breed than they were 15 years ago, and certainly have more diverse needs. While of course many of them are still very focused on print output, an equally large number look to Acrobat to help out with broader challenges than making sure that overprints overprint.

With this in mind, Adobe has introduced "PDF Portfolios" to Acrobat Pro and Pro Extended (but not for the plebes using Standard). As Adobe enthuses, "Imagine being able to produce a creative brief that truly showcases motion and interactive projects with rich video, audio, presentations, and other materials that clients can view using the free Adobe Reader. What a step up from using a mishmash of traditional files such as static screen grabs and text files that don't do the work justice. PDF documents have never been so lively and compelling!"

It's a nifty feature, designed both to further amalgamate technology acquired from Macromedia, and to try to keep PDF alive as a standalone format that augments our experience on the Web (rather than detracting from it, as many would claim). It remains to be seen just how popular it will be. My sister designs interactive games for children, and was planning to prepare just a two page static PDF to showcase her portfolio. I described the new PDF Portfolios to her the other day, and was left with the thought: she'll be producing a static two-pager.

Collaboration

I think collaboration is a far more important aspect of PDF's value than Portfolios. Acrobat has been pretty strong in this department for the last few versions, but #9 offers a useful new feature for synchronizing document views, while enhancing its overall functionality for shared document reviews. This will, I'm sure, be appreciated by many designers and their clients.

The Bottom Line

When Adobe puts its mind to creating great software, it's a marvel to behold. While Adobe's CS4 is now widely-rumored for upcoming release, and you'll probably get a copy of Acrobat 9 Pro included, there's no reason to wait (most of you will need more than one copy anyway). At the upgrade price it's a steal. I think that for most designers and their service providers the ROI will be about one week.