Adobe Acrobat is the world-standard
for cross-platform document sharing
Many websites make Adobe Acrobat PDF files available to view online.
The latest version Internet Browser software also include a pdf viewer plug-in, so you should be able to view pdf files already.
For more Adobe PDF information with explanations of its uses go to the Adobe website PDF section.
PDF files are also widely used in the printing industry for high resolution printing.Most software can output postscript files (either as .ps or .eps files) which can then be converted into PDFs either for screen viewing (72dpi), printing on desktop printers, or high resolution press output (300dpi).
This is done either directly from within the programme (such as is available in InDesign) or by using Adobe Distiller plug-in to Adobe Acrobat (not to be confused with the free Adobe Reader program)
The default distiller settings are below. The main difference is in the resolution (dpi) used.
Screen resolution: 72dpi is the most common screen resolution used for internet use and proofs. The file size is kept to a minimum for transfer by email etc - this should NEVER be used for print output.
Press resolution: 300dpi is the minimum resolution for litho printing - file size may be significantly larger however files will be smaller than complete TIF or JPEG graphic format.
The PDF/X standard eliminates many of the colour, font, and trapping variables that could cause printing problems. PDF/X makes it possible to deliver files ready for print production to nearly any print service provider with the highest possible confidence that they will print as you intended.If you are using any of the Adobe Creative Suite applications then you should have the PDF/X preset available to you. We strongly recommend that this standard be used when supplying us with PDF documents.
There are different variants of PDF/X file formats to choose from, Pagefast can accept any of these, but to ensure that the PDF is 'fully compliant' we recommend using PDF/X-1a:2001 as this also flattenes all content.
For more information on PDF/X, see this article from Adobe.
