Acrobat 8 woes

Joe

Well-known member
Posted this at the Adobe forums and it went nowhere so why not try it here?

Acrobat 8 productivity in a prepress enviroment. Seriously Adobe, what were you thinking?

In Acrobat 6 & 7 I could open the preview separations window and move it over to the side of the screen and keep my mouse pointed right at the black separation check box. Then I could keep my other hand on the keyboard arrow keys and I could fly through multi page PDF's by hitting the arrow key while turning the black separation on and off to check for 4 color blacks. And then along comes Acrobat 8 and this is no longer possible because if the separation preview window has the focus the arrow keys do not take you to the next page. If the page window has the focus the arrow keys work but you have to click the separation window once to give it the focus and then again to turn the black separation off. Once you do that the arrow keys no longer work because the page window does not have the focus so you have to click on the page to give the page window the focus and then hit the arrow key on the keyboard. Want to hit the check box on the output preview window again? One click to to give it the focus and then another click to click the check box. Production has been cut by about 75% with all of this extra clicking. Will have to stick with Acrobat 7 I guess. I just don't have the time to use Acrobat 8.

[/rant]

Edited by: Joe on Jan 4, 2008 9:45 PM
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

What you are describing is related to the change made with Acrobat 8
where the default operation of the software is to behave correctly
according to OS platform guidelines (MDI vs. SDI mode).

If you wish to revert to the old behavior - open up the preference, go
to the 'Documents' section and uncheck the first box (Open in own
window).

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Thanks for the reply Leonard. Unfortunately I don't have that setting. See attached screen shot of my "Documents" preferences. The closest thing I have is "Open cross-document links in same window" which doesn't help at all.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Oh - you're on a Mac - sorry!

Yes, because of changes required by Apple, we had to remove that
functionality. Sorry about that - feel free to yell in the direction
of 1 Infinite Loop :(.

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Not good news Leonard. Not good news at all. Looks like I'll be sticking with Acrobat 7 for production work. That's too bad. There are some things I like about Acrobat 8.

Thanks for the answer though.

Edited by: Joe on Jan 6, 2008 1:48 PM
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Be aware that Acrobat 7 won't get along with Leopard, if you are
considering moving up at any time in the future...

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

I've got Acrobat 7 installed on Leopard. Haven't noticed a problem except the PDF Printer doesn't work but I don't use that anyway.

Seriously Leonard, Acrobat 8 is not useable in it's present state. Going through a 400 page PDF and having to get around from the output preview to the next page and back to the output preview is just too cumbersome in a real production environment. I'm sure it looked nice in the lab but this is the real world. Adobe really needs to do something about it.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

and please let me change my paper size from the print dialog box! hate having to cancel and go to page setup to accomplish this.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

So noted, though I have to say that there are MUCH better ways to do
what you're trying to do than that particular technique.

For example, I would just create a custom Preflight profile with
Acrobat's preflight tool and then review the report. MUCH faster and
reliable - especially on large documents like that.

OR if you wanted to do it interactively, in Acrobat 8, use the new 'Rich
Black Warning" feature in the Output Preview window. That will
automatically flag any use of "rich blacks".

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

You can do this quite easily.

Go into the printer properties (or paper handling settings on the Mac)
and change the paper size on the printer. Acrobat will automatically
detect the change and adapt to it.

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

right, but that requires me to cancel out of the print dialog box that I am currently in. With ID and AI you can change your desired paper size from the print dialog box. There are no paper size options on Acrobat.

Edit: sorry, wouldn't have to cancel out but requires about 6 steps that don't have to be there...

Edited by: Cory Smith on Jan 6, 2008 3:32 PM
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

How do you make it flag rich black text in CMYK raster images? Not to mention having to check the issue date and page numbers on every page along with manually looking at every page to make sure there are no big holes in the page when the customer forgets to place an ad. If all PDF's were made correctly your method might work. Unfortunately they aren't and all preflighting must be done manually. And what used to take 15 minutes will now take an hour or more.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

No it doesn't!

On Windows, click the "Properties" button in the upper right of the
Print dialog. Then using your printer's settings, change the paper
size.

On the Mac, choose "Paper Handling" from the popup menu in the middle of
the dialog (<=Tiger).

Leonard
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Thanks for that link Leonard but in that example I still have the same problem. I'm using the output preview and still need to cycle through the pages but can't use the arrow keys because the output preview window has the focus. Also still have the problem of needing to visually check every page because of the issue date, page number, and missing stuff check. Automated preflight is great if you are 99.9% sure your customer is sending you complete and correct PDF's.

As an example of the type of work I'm talking about...Tomorrow night I will be doing a Bosnian newspaper that is done in Microsoft Publisher. Everything will be RGB with no fonts embedded and they want it to be printed as a 2 color (spot red and black). No automation on the planet is going to turn those RGB images into a 2 color images ready for output.

I do appreciate your responses here and am not simply trying to be argumentative. I'd just like to get the functionality in Acrobat 8 that I had in Acrobat 7 though it's not looking promising.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

I allready posted this some time ago but I'm going to again.

In acrobat 7 and previous I could zoom in and out the way most adobe programs do (comand + spacebar for zooming in and comand + ctrl + spacebar for zooming out).

In acrobat 8 this doesnt work anymore. Am I the only one with this issue here?
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Yeah, COMMAND + + (plus key) to zoom in and COMMAND + - (minus key) to zoom out works though.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

Actually the command spacebar DOES work, albeit slower than molasses in January. One of the problems is Spotlight uses the cmd-spacebar shortcut (which you can turn off). I have found that pressing the spacebar first then the cmd key works best, just make sure you don't have any text selected.
 
Re: Acrobat 8 woes

it's spacebar then command in Acro8.

It is a challenge we face with each upgrade - when key-commands, menus and functions get moved. It's a bit like rearranging the keys on a piano.

rich
 

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