Adobe® Acrobat® 8 PDF Bible

Chapter 10. Using Acrobat Distiller

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the basics of PostScript

• Understanding Distiller Preferences

• Controlling Adobe PDF settings

• Saving and deleting settings files

• Monitoring font folders

• Creating Watched folders

• Using non-Roman character sets

• Distilling PostScript

Because PDF file creation has been much simplified in Acrobat 8, you may bypass thoughts of learning what Acrobat Distiller does and how PDF documents are converted with the Distiller application. If you remember the PDF conversion steps discussed in the previous three chapters, the Adobe PDF Settings were mentioned many times. These settings apply to Acrobat Distiller, and also the conversion of documents for many options from within Acrobat and via exports from authoring programs. They all use the Adobe PDF Settings.

In order to successfully produce quality PDF documents, you need to have a basic understanding of how Acrobat Distiller works and what the settings control in regard to converting files to PDF. In some cases Distiller works in the background using Adobe PDF Settings you assign to the distillation process. Therefore, it is essential that you know how to change settings and understand what options are available to you. In this chapter I cover some advantages of using Acrobat Distiller and discuss how to change the Adobe PDF Settings.

Setting Up the Work Environment

You can access Acrobat Distiller in several ways. You can open Distiller from the Advanced menu command in Acrobat Standard and ...