Susan can construct her entire presentation, including captions and music, from within Acrobat. In so doing, she’ll work with a very helpful Task button to create her PDF, named—appropriately—the Create PDF task button.

Follow these steps to create the PDF document:

1. Click the Create PDF task button to open its pull-down menu, and choose From Multiple Files . If the Task button isn’t displayed, choose View > Task Buttons > Create PDF. The Create PDF from Multiple Documents dialog opens.
2. Click the Browse/Choose button to open a file browser dialog, and locate the files you want to use for the slideshow.
3. Select the files, and click Open to dismiss the file browser dialog and load the files into the Create PDF from Multiple Files dialog
4. Rearrange the order in the dialog by clicking a file in the list and then clicking the Move Up or Move Down buttons, or drag the file up or down in the list. Click Remove if you want to delete a file from the list.
5. Click OK to close the dialog; a Save As dialog opens, along with an Adobe Acrobat information dialog. Click OK to dismiss the Adobe Acrobat dialog (we’ll come back to it shortly).
6. In the Save As dialog, name the project and select a storage folder. By default, Acrobat names the file Binder1.pdf. Susan names her file susan_raw.pdf.
7. Click Save to dismiss the dialog and open your document in Acrobat.

Steps Involved in This Project

Susan can work entirely from within Acrobat’s Picture Tasks plug-in to create the presentation as well as different print versions of her images. She can also e-mail the presentation right from Acrobat.

First, she plans to import the images into Acrobat in a binder, or combined PDF document. After using the Picture Tasks’ features, she’ll have a slideshow complete with a title, slide transitions, and music.

To create her slideshow, Susan needs to

1. Import the group of images into Acrobat, where they are converted to PDF
2. Open the Picture Tasks’ Export to Slideshow dialog and configure the slide-show’s contents, adding a title, transitions, and music
3. E-mail the slideshow PDF to her client

You can work with a range of image formats in Acrobat. Susan is working with JPEG images, so we’ll focus our discussion on that format.

Working With JPEG Images

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a file format often used with grayscale or color images, including photographs. It is a type of compression, which means the file size is reduced by combining the pixel content in different ways.

JPEG compression is called lossy compression because it removes image information from the file to make the file smaller in size. The compression process increases the size of pixels and applies a mathematical formula to approximate the color in each larger pixel. As a result, the quality of the image can be reduced. It’s important to strike a balance between the file size and the quality of the image.

Acrobat uses five levels of JPEG compression. Image quality and file size are inversely proportional. That is, the higher the quality of the image, the larger the file size; the lower the quality, the smaller the size.

Both high and maximum compression levels produce very clear, crisp images. On the other hand, Minimum and Low levels can be distorted and display a boxy appearance. Sometimes the distortion is so great it’s difficult to determine

Suppose you need to present a series of photographs to a committee that will decide which one belongs in a company brochure. Or imagine that you are preparing a collection of shots, one of which will appear in a newspaper ad. How can you present the selection of possibilities to a client in a way that is both professional and interesting?

Acrobat 7 includes a plug-in called Picture Tasks that allows you to easily manage a group of images and prepare different types of output, including a slideshow and various print options. In this chapter’s project, you’ll learn how to use the plug-in to create a slideshow and customize it, as well as to send the final product automatically by e-mail from within Acrobat. Your viewers will be able to see the slideshow using Acrobat or Adobe Reader—a slideshow is viewable in Acrobat version 5 or newer and Acrobat Reader version 5, as well as in Adobe Reader, which replaced Acrobat Reader in version 6 of the program. Bonus material on the book’s Web site shows you how to print pictures with various layouts.

Picture This

Let’s look at Susan Jenkins’s predicament. Susan is a busy assistant at Picture This, a small suburban advertising and marketing agency that specializes in customizing calendars, placemats, and other marketing items for local businesses.

Susan has mastered the art of transferring images from her camera to her computer. Working with a simple image manipulation program she received with her camera, she can organize, correct, and store hundreds of images at a time. Susan is responsible for showing her images to the company’s client, and therein lies her problem. She has been in the habit of attaching images to e-mails to send to her clients, but she doesn’t like searching for, attaching, and keeping track of the images. She doesn’t find this method particularly convenient—either for herself or her e-mail recipients, who are forced to open, save, and organize these images themselves. More importantly, Susan would like to present these images to her clients in a more professional and interesting format.

What Susan needs is a quick way of assembling a collection of images in a format useful for online distribution via e-mail. She might decide to jazz up the way the images are presented, perhaps even adding date captions and music before sending the file to her client, Carter Motors.

Acrobat 7, of course, can help Susan solve her problem. In fact, there are two ways you can use Acrobat to produce a slideshow, depending on the format of the images you intend to use. One method is to create a slideshow manually, which you can do if you don’t have JPEG files to work with (see the sidebar, “Working With Other Image Formats”). This method involves adding your own transitions, using various tools to add captions (and music if you like), and setting the document to correctly display the slideshow. See Chapter 2 for more details on displaying a presentation.

The simplest method, which is covered in this chapter, is to use Picture Tasks, a plug-in that is activated when you use JPEG images in Acrobat.

You can edit a bookmark’s name and the destination of its link. To edit the destination to which a bookmark links, you must first navigate to the intended destination. You can then right-click on the name of the bookmark (on Mac OS, choose Ctrl + Click) and choose Set Destination. Acrobat asks you to confirm that you really want to change the bookmark’s destination to the current view (see Figure 5). For the change to occur, you must confirm the new destination. You can also select the bookmark and choose Set Bookmark Destination from the Options menu in the Bookmarks palette. When you edit bookmarks, realize that clicking on the bookmark will navigate you to its destination if you do not use the right-click technique, which allows you to edit the bookmark without activating it.

You can also change the bookmark’s name by right-clicking (on Mac OS, use Ctrl + Click) an existing bookmark’s name and choosing Rename. Or, you can choose Rename Bookmark from the Options menu, or click the bookmark, pause, and click the bookmark a second time to edit its name.

You can add bookmarks to your PDF files after they are created, or you can have software programs create your bookmarks at the time you convert your files to PDF.

When you create bookmarks, Acrobat’s default setting is to use the current view that is presently showing on your screen as the destination for the bookmark. Before creating a bookmark, you should set the view of your page to match the destination you want users to see when they select the bookmark. For example, if you view the top half of page three of a document and you create a bookmark while this page is visible on your monitor, the destination of the bookmark would be the top half of page three. Likewise, if you want to create a bookmark that makes an entire page visible, have your view set to Fit Page when creating the bookmark.

To create a bookmark that links to specific text, such as a headline, you can first select the text with the Select Text tool. Then right-click (Mac OS, use Ctrl + Click) and choose Add Bookmark (see Figure 4). Using the highlighted text as the bookmark name, the new bookmark appears in the Bookmarks palette.

You can also create a bookmark by selecting an image with the Select Image tool, right-clicking, and choosing Add Bookmark. However, unlike selecting text, which automatically uses the text to name the bookmark, this provides no such benefit. Even if the image has an Alternate tag, it is not used to create the bookmark’s name, and your end result is an untitled bookmark.

When creating bookmarks to specific regions of a page, you can create bookmarks within the Bookmarks palette. After navigating to the section of the document that will serve as the bookmark destination, choose New Bookmark from the Options menu in the Bookmarks palette. Now you can name the bookmark by entering a name for the new, untitled bookmark. Use this command while text is highlighted, and the highlighted text is used as the name of the bookmark. Despite their inconsistent naming, the New Bookmark and Add Bookmark commands are interchangeable. If you prefer to work from the keyboard, Ctrl + B (for Mac OS, use Command + B) is the shortcut for creating bookmarks. In addition, because you can never get too much of a good thing, you can also click on the New Bookmark button at the top of the Bookmark palette to create a new bookmark.

Bookmarks are used to make your PDF files easier to navigate, more interactive, and more useful (see Figure 1). Bookmarks provide interactive links that navigate to a specific destination. Although bookmarks typically link to a specific section of text, page number, or graphic on a page, they can just as easily link to an Internet web site or email address.

To view existing bookmarks in a PDF file, click the Bookmarks tab on the left side of the Document window. This opens the Bookmarks palette. Click a bookmark to follow the link. If the bookmark’s text is difficult to read, you can enlarge the size of it by choosing the Options menu in the Bookmarks palette; then choose the Text Size option. Use this command to increase or decrease the size of bookmarks. You can also wrap long bookmark lines by choosing the Wrap Long Bookmarks command.

Nested Bookmarks

Bookmarks can be nested to reflect a hierarchical structure; this is sometimes called a parent-child relationship. The topmost bookmark, which contains subsidiary topics that are indented and located under the main topic, is a primary topic. Not all bookmarks are nested, and your documents can contain a mixture of both nested and non-nested bookmarks.

You can click the plus sign (Windows) or triangle (Mac OS) adjacent to the bookmark to show its subsidiary bookmarks (see Figure 2). You can also click the minus sign (Windows) or triangle (Mac OS) that is adjacent to a bookmark to retract any subsidiary bookmarks that are visible. Finally, you can expand or collapse nested bookmarks by selecting a bookmark and choosing either Expand Current Bookmark or Expand Top-Level Bookmarks from the Options menu in the Bookmarks palette (see Figure 3). Similarly, if bookmarks are expanded, you can choose the Collapse Top-level Bookmarks command from the Options menu to collapse all but the topmost level bookmarks.

The portfolio is a PDF file, and Acrobat offers some portfolio-specific commands. Here are a few:

• From the Home mode, click Modify on the Portfolio toolbar and choose Secure Portfolio from the pop-up menu—or choose File > Modify PDF Portfolio > Secure Portfolio on the program menu—to specify restrictions and set a password. (See #119 for more information.)

  Managing Forms Using a Portfolio

  One super feature in Acrobat 9 is the ability to use a portfolio for handling forms. Once a form is designed and distributed, forms results can be compiled and stored in a portfolio. See #94, “Handling Form Returns.” Aggregating the form data can be handled by both Acrobat 9 Standard and Pro versions.

• From the Home mode, choose File > Export > Export Multiple Files to extract the component files of your portfolio in a selected file format. In the Export Multiple Files dialog, click Add Files > Add Open Files to specify the portfolio and click OK. In the Output Options dialog, select a target folder, specify a naming system, and choose an export format. Click OK to process the files. (See #34, “Exporting PDF Documents in Other Formats.”)
• From any viewing mode, choose File > Portfolio Properties to open the Document Properties dialog, where you can add descriptions, specify security, and so on. (See #31, “Finding Information about Your Document.”)

  How Reader Gets In on the Act

  You can update files in a PDF portfolio using Adobe Reader if the file is Reader-enabled. In a portfolio, each file must be enabled separately—there isn’t an overriding command to apply to all the portfolio contents. See #79 for details on enabled files.

• From any viewing mode, select an imported movie file, and choose Modify > Convert to Flash Movie to change the file’s format. (See #96, “Inserting SWF in a PDF File.”)

Sometimes a portfolio can become very large, and it’s not always easy to keep track of your content. Fortunately, Acrobat offers a customized search feature for Portfolio that lets you search everything in your portfolio, including the information listed in Details mode, and in non-PDF files.

To search the files in a portfolio, follow these steps:

1. Type the terms in the Search field and click Search .
   • You can set some criteria from the pop-up menu, including Whole Words Only and Case Sensitive. The Search Entire Portfolio option is selected by default, and can’t be deselected.
2. Review the returns shown in the Search Results dialog
3. Click a return to read the file’s details. If you are in Details mode, the file is highlighted in the list; if you are in Preview mode, the result is highlighted on the page.
4. Click Previous  or Next  to review the results.
5. Close the Search Results pane when you have finished.

Files added to a portfolio aren’t static. That is, you can open a file from the portfolio, make changes (such as Reader-enabling the file or adding a digital signature), and save the revised file. Some commands can be applied directly in the Portfolio window.

Opening files for editing. Although not every file type can be edited from within your portfolio, a great many file types can. Check out the sidebar “Update These Files…” for a list of formats.

Follow these steps to edit a PDF file:

1. Select the file to work with from the Home or List mode, and then click Preview  on the Portfolio toolbar to display the files in the Preview Portfolio window
2. Click Open  to display the file in Acrobat. You can access all the Acrobat menus and tools.
3. Make your changes as necessary and save; the portfolio file is automatically updated.

   NOTE

   The same process applies to non-PDF files, although the files open in their native program.

Editing in portfolio. Some commands can be applied directly in the Portfolio window to a selected file or files, such as Reduce File Size, Run the PDF Optimizer, and others. Select the file or files in Home or List mode, and then choose the menu item. A sampling of the commands you can use in Portfolio are listed in the sidebar “Command Your Portfolio.”

Linking Portfolio Files

Here’s an interesting fact: Linking relationships aren’t maintained when files are added to a portfolio, but can only be created within the portfolio.

To add a link, double-click a file in Home or Details mode to open it in Preview mode. Choose Tools > Advanced Editing> Link tool  and define the link. Be sure to use the “Go to page view” action to display another page in the portfolio, rather than the “Open a file” action that you’d usually use when linking two documents.

One important feature of Portfolio is the ability to arrange the files in logical and meaningful ways. You can coordinate the portfolio files using a folder system, organize and sort the file details, and view an individual file to manage its content.

Here are some tips for organizing your Portfolio component files:

• If you import a folder, its contents—including any subfolders—are preserved in the portfolio.
• You can’t select more than one folder at a time from the Browse for Folder dialog to add them to the portfolio. Either locate and select the parent folder (and then delete any subfolders you don’t want to maintain), or repeat the Browse for Folder process until you have the folders you want.
• The folder hierarchy in a portfolio is shown as a breadcrumb menu. There are three nested levels of folders from the Home mode.

Acrobat Portfolio lets you manage existing information about each component of the portfolio and add custom data. To check details, click the Specify File Details bar in the Edit pane. You’ll see the Columns to Display settings in the Edit pane, and the folders listed in Details mode

Keep these ideas in mind as you organize, sort, and rearrange columns and data:

• You can choose the settings in the Edit pane, or directly on the list in Details mode. Changes made in one area automatically display in the other.
• Drag the vertical separator between columns in Details mode to change a column’s width.
• To sort the contents, choose a column name from the Initial Sort pop-up menu. You can sort by any of the active columns in Ascending  or Descending  order.
• To add content or change values, such as a file’s name, click the label in Details mode and type the new value when the text is activated.
• Select the check boxes for each column you want to display—deselect those you don’t want to use.
• Custom columns can be configured and used in the same ways as the default columns; read how in the sidebar “Add Your Own Columns.

A PDF portfolio offers numerous ways in which to customize the display in accordance with your corporate or business requirements. You can construct a welcome page using different types of content, and insert a header that offers different text and image options. If branding is vital, use both a welcome page (as the initial introduction) and a header (to maintain your identity as the user navigates through the portfolio).

A welcome page introduces your portfolio. In some cases, there’s no need to include an introduction. However, if you are designing a PDF brochure for your mountain resort, or want to include a list of instructions for participants in a shared portfolio, turn to a welcome page.

With your portfolio under way, follow these steps:

1. Click the Add Welcome & Header bar to display the pane. Click Welcome Page to open a list of options, including Text Only, Image Only, Image & Text, or Flash Movie content.
2. Choose an option to display the appropriate text or graphic frames on the preview area, and resize them as desired.
3. Insert text or an image in the frames accordingly:
   • To insert an image, click the image frame to open the Browse for Image dialog. Locate and select the image to display, and click Open. The image is inserted, the dialog closes, and the Image toolbar is activated. On the toolbar, select a background color, and set the Scale and Opacity values by dragging the sliders.
   • Click the Text field and type in your text. When you input text, the Text toolbar—which lets you specify font size, color, alignment, and background color—displays. If you want to use different font styles, such as the underline , select the text on the text frame first.

     TIP

     Although you can resize the frame, you can’t drag it to another position on the page. What you can do is change the size of the image/text frames to reconfigure them on the page’s layout, “resizing” them from one area of the page to another.

Maintain your identity by using a header that displays at the top of your portfolio by following these steps:

1. Click the Add Welcome & Header bar to display the pane. Click Header to open a list of options, including text and image options.
2. Select the option for the text you want, such as an e-mail address or URL.
3. Insert an image if you’ve selected an image option; insert and configure text in the fields inserted on the page.
4. Click Home  to return to the default mode, where you see your header displayed above the presentation content