Last time ( A PDF Primer Part I)I told you all about why you would want to use PDFs in the course of your work.  I know you’ve been waiting for the how…. so without any ado, let’s cut to the chase and create some PDFs!

Adobe offers several different ways for you to create PDFs through their Acrobat software: 

1. Choosing the “Create Adobe PDF” option from the File menu from within the application you are using, such as Microsoft Office
2. Printing to the Acrobat PDF Writer
3. Printing to the Acrobat Distiller print driver
4. Distilling a PostScript file (.ps) or encapsulated PostScript image file (.eps) using Acrobat Distiller
5. Scanning a hard copy document to create a PDF
6. Creating PDFs from PostScript files automatically through Watched Folders

Now you might be asking, why are there so many different ways to create this thing?  Are all the ways the same?  A PDF is a PDF, right? Well, yes and no.  The first two options use the PDF Writer to create a PDF from your application.  The PDF writer is quick and dirty and effective for a large percentage of situations provided the content of the document is not too complex or loaded with graphics.  If you have a lot of graphics, unique fonts, or something complex, then using Acrobat Distiller is the way to go.  It produces higher quality and more accurate results in these situations.  Option 4 is the best to choose for distilling graphic files (.eps) and for applications (or other colleagues, vendors, etc.) that provide you with simply a PostScript file for you to use.  Lastly, scanning a hard copy straight to PDF is what I consider a last resort for a situation where all you have is a hard copy.  I say last resort because this method creates larger to absolutely huge files sizes and the quality is not as good as if you created the PDF from the electronic version of the document.

Let’s now walk through each of these with some visual examples for you to follow.

Choosing “Create Adobe PDF” option from the File menu

As you might imagine, this is about as straightforward as you get, but for the sake of being thorough, here’s what it looks like.

It’ll simply prompt you for a filename and location to save and viola – you’ve got a PDF in less than 10 seconds.

Printing to the Acrobat PDF Writer or Acrobat Distiller

This way is also very straightforward.  Quite frankly, the ability to print directly to Acrobat Distiller was a much welcome, new feature in version 4.  Choose File à Print as you normally would and then choose either PDFWriter or Distiller:

Once again, it is quick and simple.  Keep in mind, though, that it saves it to the print driver’s default location.  In this case, C:\Program Files\Adobe Acrobat\PDF Output.  So, don’t panic when all these screens flash up and you see your PDF and then wonder, ‘where oh where did my PDF file go’.  You can change this setting by going to the Start Menu à Settings à Printers, choose Acrobat Distiller and then from that menu, choose properties.  This will take you to the following screen where you can change the folder for the default output from the Distiller Print Driver.

Using Distiller

If you have a PostScript file or encapsulated PostScript file to distill from within the Distiller application, it too is extremely easy to do. Simply open the Distiller Application, which looks thusly:

You can set your job options to be screen optimized, print optimized, or press optimized.  Then its simply a matter of doing a File à Open, choosing the file you want to distill, and then watching the progress bar zip by as it creates your PDF.  Confirmation messages and any error messages are displayed in the window in the bottom half of the screen. 

Scanning to create a PDF

Scanning is always a bit trickier, and the results, even after much tweaking are not of as high quality as the methods discussed above.  However, we all know of instances where you need to create an electronic copy of something old, or something unique, or something “legal looking” and you have no choice but to scan.  Acrobat allows you to import directly from your scanner into the Acrobat program and it creates the PDF as it scans.  Simply open Adobe Acrobat and from the File menu choose Import à Scan.

From here, the following window appears from which you choose your scanner from the dropdown list as well as whether you are scanning single or double sided documents.  Lastly, choose if you want to create a new PDF or append additional scans to the current document.

Create PDFs from PostScript files automatically through Watched Folders

One way to create PDFs automatically is to set up Distiller to “Watch” certain folders on your hard drive or network drives. Open Acrobat Distiller and choose Settings à Watched Folders.  From there you will see the following screen:

From here you can Add folders you want Distiller to Watch, choose how often it should poll the folders, and choose where you want the PDFs saved, what you want it to do with the PostScript files once the job is complete and more. Remember that Distiller must be running in order for it to watch; therefore, you want to put Distiller in startup group so it is always running.

Once you have created a PDF, you can create links within the document, to other documents, audio files, or web pages as well as create form fields that have additional programming behind them to make them interactive and web enabled.  I recommend either the Acrobat Tour from the HELP menu or the “Adobe Acrobat Classroom in a Book” to explore these more advanced features. 

As you can see from the steps above, Acrobat really does almost all the work for you.  There is little technical savvy required to create a PDF (other than knowing how to work menus and actually find files on your hard drive!), but the benefits to using them can be great (See Part I of this article for reasons why).  From uses on the web to exchanging marketing mock-ups with external vendors to creating interactive business forms, PDFs are a powerful business tool.