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Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Review |
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Written by Don Lee
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Monday, 18 August 2008 |
 Adobe Acrobat 9 has matured into an application beyond the creation of
PDF documents. I have never given the product much thought beyond PDFs
but with Acrobat 9, I have seen a tremendous number of features that
will also change your perception of this product.
Getting into Acrobat
Acrobat 9 has a number of new features so let’s take a look at what is under the hood.
Now if you have followed Adobe through the release of Creative Suite 3, then you know how they are working towards a more streamlined production process across their entire product line. Acrobat is another product that is undergoing that process as well. For example, you can now add multimedia content into your Acrobat files but instead of having the convert the files separately, you can now import and convert the video file from within Acrobat. With native Flash built-in, you don’t have to worry about platform compatibility.
The web doesn’t have to be a stranger to your PDF files. You can now convert a single webpage or an entire website into a single PDF file. Not only does it pick up the URL you specify from within Acrobat 9, but all of the webpage’s links remain intact as well. If you were to click on any of the links, it will open that URL in your default web browser.
Collaboration is an important issue when it comes to Adobe products these days and they have taken the point to Acrobat 9. Through Adobe’s ConnectNow service, you can share your desktop, communicate with colleagues and even share your ideas visually. Another feature from within Acrobat is the ability to make your PDF documents available on Acrobat.com. You can upload your documents there so you can then share them with your colleagues. You no longer have to e-mail PDF documents to colleagues for approvals, document issues and other problems.
In addition, the other users can now make comments (it looks like digital yellow sticky notes) throughout the document so others can see your suggestions. The others accessing the file can also leave suggestions. Each sticky note displays the user, their comment, the time and date of the comment. You don’t have to wonder who is working on the file because everything is documented. So instead of having to gather up the suggestions yourself, weed out the important things and other issues, you can just go through the sticky notes and make whatever changes you need to.
Another new feature provides users with an opportunity to scan documents directly into Acrobat 9. To try this out, I used my Canon Pixma MP140 scanner/printer to scan a simple, typed form letter with a few handwritten notes on the document. I chose to do a “Custom Scan” from within Acrobat. As I was selecting options, I chose the “Run OCR” option which gave me the ability to search and copy text from the scanned document. When the scan was completed, I was a bit surprised by the quality of the output. The original document was not perfect and the handwritten notes were a bit sloppy but the scanned output matched up quite nicely to the original. While I did a quick scan with mostly default settings, you can choose to perform a scan with a variety of options such as despeckle, optimize for quality or file size, background removal and the creation of a PDF portfolio based on the number of documents.
The Final Word
Overall, I found Adobe Acrobat 9 to be very useful and a tool that every office environment should use for documentation creation, tracking, project management and more. Adobe has done a wonderful job integrating some features into Acrobat instead of having to do the work externally and having to import your work into the program.
For example, the ability to convert video files to the Flash format as you import them into your documents. Even your Microsoft Office forms and spreadsheets can be imported into a PDF fully intact. The scanning into PDF feature is another nice feature that I am sure will save someone a lot of time moving documents to the PDF format. It is these small, subtle features that make a difference in decreasing the time spent on implementing content.
Adobe Acrobat 9 is a solid application with a great number of features and upgrades. No office environment should be without Acrobat 9. With the closer integration with other Adobe products and the built-in processing from within the program, this is what makes Acrobat a great addition to your work tools. Adobe Acrobat 9 earns 4.5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.
Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional is available for Windows and Macintosh platforms.
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