which is available free from Adobe
Inc.
PDF is Portable Document Format.
PDF files must be viewed using Acrobat Reader which is available free from Adobe
Inc.
If you want to transfer files by email or the Web to other computer users and to ensure that your files are readable, the safest option is to convert them to PDF. Other computer users will not always have the appropriate software to view your text and graphics files but the software to read PDF files is free and widely installed. PDF is frequently used as a 'print-friendly' format which can be made widely available from the Web.
PDF files will appear exactly the same whatever computer you use, so a PDF file made from a document which was originally formatted in Word will look exactly the same on someone else's machine as it did on yours. This is true even if graphics were embedded in the original file.
PDF is:
First you will need the full Acrobat software (not simply the Acrobat Reader). (Acrobat is available at a substantially reduced price for educational establishments.)
Acrobat provides three methods for creating PDF files:
The exact method of creating a PDF file depends on the version of Acrobat which you have installed. You may have one or more of the following options:
. If you click on this a PDF file of your Word document will automatically
be created. You will be prompted for filename.Acrobat files can be made either by using PDFWriter or Acrobat Distiller. We recommend that you use Acrobat Distiller as it generally handles fonts and graphics more effectively. If you use Acrobat version 4 or later choose the following options:
Undoubtedly the safest way to avoid problems with different fonts is to choose the most common ones:
Embedding your fonts is important even if you are only using the standard range of fonts. It is recommended that you use the following settings which you can find under Settings, Job options, Fonts. These font options will be set automatically if you select Print Optimised when you print from Word.
This is especially important for asian fonts. To embed asian fonts you must use Acrobat version 4 and Acrobat Distiller.
The simplest approach to creating a file with text and graphics is to import the graphics into the Word (or WordPerfect) text file. Then produce the PDF as above.
Individual journals will have different rules about the size of file they can accept. Generally speaking it is a good plan to keep the final size (including figures) of any file below 500K in order to keep the transfer time to a minimum.
If figures are added to the text this will tend to make the file large so it is worth keeping the figures as small as possible. As a rough guide, if your figure occupies a full A4 page reduce it to 60% before making your PDF.
If you have created your file using Acrobat Distiller as described above go to Acrobat Distiller and select Settings, Job Options, Compression. You can reduce the resolution to 150 or even 72 dpi for screen viewing of colour or greyscale images. For line diagrams use a minimum of 600 dpi. Check that this produces a reasonable printed version.
Figure files can be reduced considerably in size by the following methods:
When you convert the file to a portable format compression will automatically be applied to the graphics files so the final file size will be considerably reduced when you save as PDF.
Some types of image may look fine in Word but very poor in Acrobat Reader. These are usually bitmapped graphics. If you are using Photoshop to produce these graphics you may achieve a better result using the following steps
Multiple PDF files can then be added to the end of the manuscript PDF file, using the Insert option to create a single PDF file.
(with thanks to the Company of Biologists, JCS help pages)
Have a look in Program files/Adobe/Acrobat x/AcroDist.exe
If you RIGHT click with your mouse you can create a shortcut to it and place this on the
desktop.
1. Print your document to a PostScript file (choose a postscript printer and select
'print to file' )
2. Start Acrobat Distiller (see above)
3. Select your PostScript file.
4. Specify a location for the PDF file. Acrobat Distiller then converts the file to PDF.
5. Open an Acrobat viewer.
6. Locate and open the PDF file.
Document merge Convert and combine proposals, presentations, images, and other documents into one compact Adobe PDF file in a single step (Windows only), and add headers, footers, and watermarks.
Review management Create lists of reviewers and track the feedback received. Gather comments into a single Adobe PDF file, or view them collectively in a separate window for easy reconciliation.
Commenting tools Create custom stamps or dynamic date-time stamps, and redline documents. Indicate text insertions and deletions.
Also in Acrobat 5 - Save as RTF option
