Adobe Acrobat 7 TIPS and TRICKS THE 100150 BEST [Electronic resources]

TIP 50: Print Production

Acrobat 7 Professional includes a suite of print production tools you can use to evaluate and prepare documents for high-end printing. Choose Tools > Print Production and select an option from the submenu, or select Show Print Production Toolbar to display the set of tools (Figure 50a). When the Print Production toolbar is open, the submenu command is Hide Print Production Toolbar. You can also access the toolbar from the shortcut menu. Right-click (Control-click) the toolbar area at the top of the program window and choose Print Production from the toolbar listing.

Although the tools are intended for high-resolution printing, there are several tools that can be very useful in many business-based production situations as well:

• Click Output Preview to open the Output Preview dialog. Click the Simulation Profile drop-down arrow and choose options to show you how your document would look using different types of paper, different monitors, different color profiles, and so on (Figure 50b).

  Figure 50b. Simulate how your document would look using different types of paper, monitors, and other types of output.

  Soft-Proofing The Output Preview dialog is used to simulate how your document looks in different conditions. In traditional publishing, you print a hard copy of the document to preview the colors. In Acrobat, you can use color profiles and other settings to show how your document will look in print; this is called soft-proofing. Click the Simulate Ink Black check box to preview how the document would look printed in black ink; click the Simulate Paper White to preview the color of your document printed on white paper. The Simulate Paper White option is used in addition to the Simulate Ink Black option. Not all profiles in Acrobat will support these two soft-proofing options. In order for soft-proofing to be valuable, your monitor must be calibrated correctly; you should also consider room lighting. For example, bright fluorescent light can cast pink or blue tones on your screen.

• To open the Crop Pages dialog, click the Crop tool ; use the settings to crop off unwanted areas of the page. Read more about the Crop tool in Chapter 9.

• Click the PDF Optimizer tool to open the PDF Optimizer dialog. In this dialog, you can choose settings to decrease the size of the file, compress images, unembed fonts, remove unused objects, and other processes. The PDF Optimizer is discussed in Chapter 17.