Review of Adobe Acrobat 5

In 1999, I wrote a review of Acrobat 4. Since then I am sure the majority of readers are much more familiar with building, editing, and using PDF's or Portable Document Format documents than they were earlier. The PDF document has become universal for conveying information both on the web and in print. This file format preserves the exact look of the original document. It is as if a picture had been taken of the document. These files can be read by the free downloadable Document Reader from Adobe. The CD-ROM that contains Acrobat version 5 also includes Acrobat Reader version 5.

While one can use the free reader, and it has become necessary to have a version of it installed on one's machine because almost all information about various products is contained in PDF documents, in order to edit PDF documents and capture other files and covert them to PDF's, the Acrobat software program must be installed on a machine

As stated earlier this format is universal. Acrobat generated documents have become an important part of industry because these documents can be shared over an intranet as well as over the internet; can be commented upon; approved with a digital signature, etc. Also, Adobe has closely integrated Acrobat 5 with Microsoft Office for Windows.

Some of the features new to Acrobat version 5 give the user the ability to:

  • Save a PDF as an RTF to be inserted into another document.
  • Extract images from PDf's and save them as TIFF's, JPEG's, or PNG's.
  • Save a PDF document as an image. This option converts each page of the PDF into a separate image file. (This document saved as a TIF became two separate files because it split into two 8.5x11 pages.)
  • Save a PDF as an EPS or PostScript file (levels 1, 2, or 3).
  • Convert other formats to PDF's easily using the Open As Adobe PDF command. These files include BMP's, CompuServe GIF's, HTML's, and more.
  • Institute Security measures to prevent document changes or the printing of designated PDF's.

In additions:

  • Acrobat tools can be accessed when on the Internet through a Browser.
  • Live electronic forms can be created that are dynamic in nature.
  • XML form data is supported

More enhancements for the use of PDF documents have been included in version 5 to increase the integration with other Adobe products, especially with Illustrator 9 and Photoshop 6. One of these is the ability to retain transparency effects created in Ilustrator 9.

The Capture feature has been extended allowing for the capturing of single web pages or a whole site to keep an archival record of changes over time.

While the following feature is not new to Acrobat 5, it allows for many pages of printed information to be compiled in a single PDF through scanning. The scanning plug-in gives the user choices on how to scan in the pages. Thus, all articles clipped from magazines, for example on Camcorders, can be scanned into one PDF file.

The new PDF Consultant tool allows for easy access to Adobe or third-party plug-ins that can inspect, analyze, and even repair PDF documents. On the inspection level, Remove and Detect commands allow the user to remove unwanted elements in the document. Space can, also, be audited and optimized.

More of the above descriptions of the new or extended features of Adobe Acrobat 5 can be found on the Adobe web site.

The system requirements are very compatible with both old and new Windows Operating Systems. They are:

  • An Intel Pentium class processor
  • Microsoft Windows 95 OSR2.0,Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT with Service Packs 5 or 6, and Windows 2000
  • 32 MB of RAM with 64 recommended
  • 115 MB of hard disk space with 70 more if using Asian fonts
  • CD-ROM drive

The requirements for the Macintosh are:

  • PowerPC processor
  • OS 8.6, 9.0.4, or 9.1 (Using the OS of 8.6 reduces the number of features that are contained in Acrobat 5.)
  • 32 MB of RAM (with virtual memory on) with 64 recommended
  • 105 MB of available hard disk space and 70 more for Asian fonts
  • CD-ROM drive

The street price is about $220 for a non-upgrade; while the upgrade price is about $ 90.00.

Included with Acrobat 5 is a trial version of Liquid Forms Designer and a Getting Started Guide.

Since using one of the very early versions of Acrobat, I have seen how it has grown and strengthened and become an invaluable tool in any work environment. It is hard to imagine not having it available. Version 5 of Acrobat has added features which I know both as a writer and graphic artist I will use. Even though I do not work in a team environment, I find that I use Acrobat a lot and will use it even more due to the new features in version 5.