Product Description

No Acrobat user can afford to miss a beat in his or her production and business task workflow--which makes mastering new versions of key tools like Acrobat a problem. Realizing that the users Acrobat 9 is designed for--creative professionals, business users, and technical  professionals -- aren't going to interrupt their work schedules to take a class in the software, Adobe has brought the classroom to them in this handy, comprehensive book. Through a series of self-paced lessons (each of which builds on the last and includes hands-on projects that the reader can create using the files on the CD-ROM), this guide acquaints users with all of Acrobat's regular and industrial-strength features for creating, reviewing, editing, commenting on, modifying, and preflighting PDF files. Readers who are already familiar with the basics of using Acrobat will get up to speed on significantly overhauled new features available in Acrobat 9.

Acrobat 9 Pro offers a new PDF Portfolio feature that lets users bring multiple files together in a single interactive PDF portfolio. Acrobat 9 Pro also offers users a dramatically overhauled form creation tool; a streamlined, interactive document review process; synchronized document views; powerful redaction tools, and more.Acrobat Pro Extended (formerly Adobe Acrobat 3D Version 8) offers Windows users added functionality, such as new 3D capabilities, PDF mapping features, video conversion tools, native support for Flash technology (so users can include video, animations, and applications in Acrobat and Acrobat Reader PDF files),  and Adobe Presenter, which lets users create interactive presentations with PowerPoint and then publish them to PDF.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12407 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780321552976
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
The Adobe Creative Team of designers, writers, and editors has extensive, real-world knowledge of Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe's Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and experienced users get up to speed quickly on Adobe software products.

Customer Reviews

Beginner
The first pages introduce the reader to PDF. What is PDF; how does one create PDFs; what are the applications of PDFs? For example, one could convert Outlook mail to PDF for backup or publish HR Employee Handbooks to PDF and save on paper. What is this part of the workspace called? And that? What is the Taskbar; the Toolbar; and all those buttons? What are the PDF design considerations for screen viewing versus the printing press versus web publishing?

The remaining 14 chapters introduce and explain topics via the lessons on the CD. Each chapter concludes with review questions and answers to wake those who may have been reading this book as an Agatha Christie fiction.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
--------------------
Getting Started
1. Introducing Adobe Acrobat 9
2. Looking at the Work Area
3. Creating Adobe PDF Files
4. Creating Adobe PDF from Microsoft Office Files (Windows Only)
5. Combining Files in PDF Portfolios
6. Reading and Working with PDF Files
7. Enhancing and Editing PDF Documents
8. Adding Signatures and Security
9. Using Acrobat in a Review Cycle
10. Working with Forms in Acrobat
11. Creating Multimedia Presentations
12. Using the Legal Features [such as redaction and Bates numbering]
13. Using the Engineering and Technical Features
14. Using Acrobat in Professional Printing
15. Working with 3D in PDF Files


This book covers Adobe Acrobat Standard, Professional, and Extended for Mac OS and Windows, but only Acrobat 9 Pro runs on OS X. The following are not available on OS X:

a) Use QuickBooks data in forms (Windows English only) - Import and export Intuit QuickBooks data using custom templates.

b) LiveCycle Designer ES is not part of the Adobe Acrobat family and so is not covered here, but is bundled in Acrobat Pro and Extended because it far exceeds the features of Acrobat's integrated AcroForms and is the application of choice for advanced forms designers.


There is little here for those seeking Acrobat certification except to acquaint with new and enhanced features of Acrobat 9, which can be learned from Adobe's website. It is well-edited for proper spelling and grammar, which is always welcome for IT books, and the layout is lively and easy to follow, as expected from Adobe. A good book for beginners.

Expensive and Disappointing
I've now used Acrobat for a number of years and have, for the most part, been able to figure out what I needed to do. I recently bought a new scanner (which is not yet available on Amazon) and have come across several problems while converting documents to .pdf files. Due to these matters, I thought I'd finally spend the money to buy this book to fully learn all of Acrobat (I have Acrobat 9 Pro) features. To say that I'm disappointed in this grossly overpriced book is an understatement. Much of the book is devoted to materials that do not need to be dealt with (as they're so basic) or on flashy (no pun intended) elements, such as 3-D animations and other not-so-important features that I suspect most users could care less about.

To make matters even worse, the book instructs readers to examine the help files that come with Acrobat for information (if these help files were useful, I wouldn't have needed to buy this or other books). Then there's the problem that some features are not covered in detail at all - as I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to use a new scanner and the OCR functions on Acrobat. Less than a full page is devoted to that topic and essentially nothing helpful is provided (yes, I already know how to press the button on the scanner - something that this book tells readers to do). Nothing at all is mentioned about the new feature in Acrobat 9 about "ClearScan" - the function that replaced Formatted Text & Graphics found in older versions of Acrobat. While I finally figured out what "ClearScan" was by searching the Internet, I still can't figure out how that is used to with the TouchUp Text tool (which seems to work much differently in Acrobat 9). While the results of "ClearScan" seem to be very good (at least as far as I can determine at this time), this book says absolutely nothing about it.

Overall, the book does provide some good information, but one must wade through pages/chapters of things that need little or no explanation in order to find it. While this book is beautifully published (nice paper, good graphics, etc.), it is even less valuable than Acrobat's insufficient help files (for example, ClearScan is NOT covered in any detail there either). I would not recommend this book to anyone who is already familiar with Acrobat - only to those who are true neophytes to the program. Even so, there are too many items of importance that are not covered.

Get Up To Speed Quickly and Easily
By now, almost everyone who uses a computer is familiar with the Adobe Classroom in a Book series. This series is the gold standard of instructional books for Adobe products and always the best place to begin when you are learning the new features of an Adobe product or getting up to speed on an upgrade.

Adobe Acrobat 9, Classroom in a Book covers the Standard, Pro and Pro Extended versions. Adobe claims Acrobat 9 is 200-400 times faster than previous versions. That's a bit difficult to digest, but the book is the same old speed. You know, the speed that your old noggin is running on any particular day.

I am a long-time and enthusiastic Acrobat user and I love the Classroom in a Book series because it is a quick and efficient way to get up to speed on new features and Acrobat 9 has plenty of those. It's also a marvelous way to review any feature that you might be a little rusty on. Most of us use software within certain parameters of our jobs and we're really good at those. The rub comes when you have to come up with something new and unfamiliar. Enter Classroom in a Book. Pull it off the shelf, find the skill you want to learn, insert the lesson CD that comes with the book and follow along. In no time, you'll be ready to competently and confidently start your own project.

An area of great interest to me is pulling together a multimedia promotional portfolio. Covered on page 96 of this ten-chapter, 368-page book, I pulled up the Chapter 5 Aquo_Fin file and followed the instructions. It's very handy to use the same files to follow the lesson. I found it to be very helpful and PDF Portfolio is a feature I now use often.

You can't go wrong with the Classroom in a Book series. The quicker you can get yourself up to speed on an application, the happier and more productive you'll be. "Adobe Acrobat 9, Classroom in a Book" should be your first stop on your way to fully utilizing your software.