Adobe has made its name in superb design software, but it may well be remembered for arguably its most useful gift to the software world: the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Saving any document you have created in a Microsoft Office program is easier with the latest release, Acrobat 5, and you can select a range of features, from password protection to display options.
The enhancements in this version are aimed at collaboration across a work group and promise a reliable workflow. The security features which use digital signatures and public key encryption ensure that only those authorised to see or change the PDF can do so.
But Acrobat 5 takes this kind of file sharing a step further. The author of the document can specify what readers will be able to do with the PDF, whether they will be able to print it or add comments but not change it.
Reviewers of the document can insert notes a little like post-its which can be incorporated into the final version when edited. On top of this is the ability to save audio notes, in .wav format, as a comment too.
Acrobat 5 is much faster than previous versions and the ease of use for converting an Office file to a PDF is compellingly simple. A toolbar can be used in each of the Office suite programs, which means documents can be entirely created in that package you are most familiar with before being converted to a PDF.
However, you can use Acrobat’s touch-up tools for graphics editing if needs be. It has a new interface and its tools have been simplified.
What’s more it also reduces the size of the file dramatically, using its distiller filter. Examples of six-megabyte PowerPoint presentations being reduced to 1,7-megabytes abound.