Acrobat 5 PDF Creation Tips

Some basic tips for creating PDF documents such as the ones found on replacementdocs. Includes tips for creating PDFs both from JPEGs and directly from a scanner.

Acrobat 5 PDF Creation Tutorial

Note - Since the original creation of this tutorial I have realized that Adobe has made many major changes regarding some of the things I discuss below. There are many things in this document that would only apply to Acrobat 5. So, if you read something that doesn't make sense, it is probably because you are using a newer version. I plan to write a new tutorial for a later version, but until then, this is still somewhat useful. Just be aware that many of the commands and processes may have changed.

The process of scanning in a document and creating a PDF from it can be a daunting task for people who have never had any experience with PDF creation before. Hopefully this page will be able to help you through the process.

Creating a PDF can be done in several ways. Which way you use may simply be a choice of personal preference. All of them require the use of the full version of Adobe Acrobat (i.e. - not just the free Acrobat Reader). We will be covering two methods in this tutorial. The first is creating PDFs from existing JPEG files. The second is creating a PDF directly from scanning a document.

Basic Things You Should Know

Acrobat itself will not compress images -
Adobe Acrobat will compile images into a PDF, but does none of its own compression on the images. If you are creating PDFs from existing JPEG files, then the compression of the JPEGs will be maintained (i.e. - the filesize of the PDF will be more or less equal to the sum of the filesizes of the JPEGs). However, if you scan pages directly into Acrobat and save the PDF, you will end up with a massive file because there is no compression applied. To compress the images you need to use Adobe's PDFWriter or Adobe Distiller. PDFWriter can be used, but I have had mixed results with it. I highly recommend using Adobe Distiller instead. How to use Distiller is covered below in Distilling the PDF.

Use a sensible scan resolution -
When scanning, I've seen people use everything from 72 dpi up to 1200 or so dpi. There's really no need for that for this kind of work. The ideal scan resolution for most situations is 150 dpi. Part of the reason for that is because of the way certain documentation is printed. 150 dpi scans will minimize the amount of interference in the scan. I won't go into the details but interference is an odd kind of moire effect (a wavy looking pattern) that appears in your scans. This is caused, more or less, by the materials being printed at a different resolution than what you are scanning. On a few rare occasions, such as very detailed maps or very small print, I will use 300 dpi for scans. Any higher than 300 dpi gives pretty much negligible benefits and huge filesize increases.

Use a sensible JPEG compression level - JPEG compression can make a huge difference in your filesize. I use JPEG Medium compression in all circumstances. I have yet to see a document where using a higher quality makes a substantial difference. If I'm in Photoshop, I use JPEG Quality level 5 (on a scale of 12). In Acrobat, it's just called JPEG Medium.

Creating a PDF From Existing JPEG Files

OK, some of you out there may have individual JPEG scans of manual pages sitting around on your hard drive. The biggest problem I have found with JPEG files is having them at the wrong resolution. This can have results such as a CD cover showing up as only 1-inch-by-1-inch in Acrobat. It is probably to your benefit to load up a JPEG or two into a photo editor like Microsoft Photo Editor or Adobe Photoshop and check the image dimensions (in inches, not pixels). If the dimensions look correct, then you can proceed.

You need to remember that Acrobat itself does not compress images. When importing existing JPEG files, the JPEG compression levels will be maintained. So, if you want to use a different compression level for your PDF, you will need to either change the compression
levels on the individual JPEGs (Photoshop has some batch processing to do that automatically) or use Adobe Distiller after creating the PDF (see below - Distilling the PDF).

OK, now to do the actual importing. The easiest thing to do is to just start up Acrobat and then open the first page JPEG in Acrobat. This will automatically create the initial PDF with just the first page in it.

Now you need to add the rest of the pages. This is actually a bit more tricky than it would seem. You go to Document->Insert Pages in Acrobat. However, if you import multiple JPEGs at one time, you may end up with them out of order in the PDF. I haven't done any research, so I don't know if this is just a Windows file selector quirk or what. Anyone with any other experience let me know, because this drove me crazy. Anyway, so if you have all of your JPEGs listed in the order they should be in (eg - 01.jpg, 02.jpg, ... 23.jpg), here's what you need to do. Get to the Open File dialog box. Click on the Details button so that you see the filename, size, type, etc. Now, sort them by filename in reverse alphabetical order. Now, select the bottom file (which should be page 2). Scroll up to the top file (the last page) and Shift-Click it. This should select all of the pages in between and when you hit OK, they will be inserted in the proper alphabetical order. I know it sounds crazy and I have no idea why it happens... it just does... at least in Windows 98.

That's about it. It'll take a minute or so to open and convert all the pages but you should end up with a complete PDF. If the JPEGs were at the proper compression level, you're done! Otherwise, go to Distilling The PDF.

Creating a PDF Directly from a Scanner

This is probably the quickest and best method if you are starting from scratch with just a manual and a scanner. Every scanner will have different software, so you'll have to consult the scanner documentation for the specifics on some of the scan options.

So to get started put your manual on the scanner. Start up Acrobat and go File->Import->Scan... Select your scanner and Create a New PDF document. This should start your scanner software. In your scanner software, you'll need to select only the area covered by the manual. This is usually done by a pre-scan and then selecting the area. You may be able to save the selected area for use in future scans.

Now, you need to set the resolution, most likely this should be set at 150 dpi. If you have a map with particularly small details or other small print, you may want to use 300 dpi. Make sure you use a multiple of 150 dpi or you may end up with an interference effect.

Go ahead and scan the page. Then Acrobat will ask if you want to scan another page or if you're done. You can just repeat the process over and over until the end of the document, but I recommend selecting Done every 5-10 pages. This will be sort of like "saving" your scans. I have had bugs where when I finished a scan, there was some kind of miscommunication between the scanner and Acrobat, and I lost everything up to the last time I selected Done.

OK, when you've finally scanned the last page and selected Done you will have a complete PDF. Remember though, the images are not compressed at this point, so your PDF will be HUGE if you save at this point. Instead you should use Adobe Distiller on it (see below).

Distilling the PDF

OK, this is one of the most important things to know how to do with making/editing PDFs. The Distiller is essentially a "printer". Except instead of printing to paper, it prints to a new file. So, to use Distiller, you need to do a File->Print just like you're printing a document normally. Then you just select Distiller as your printer, choose any options, and hit Print.

That's the quick rundown of how to use Distiller, but for the best results you may want to tweak the settings a bit. For this you'll need to start Distiller and go into Job Options and change the resolution and compression settings. To facilitate things a bit I'm supplying the Distiller settings that I use here. You can just download these and put them in your Acrobat/Distillr/Settings folder.

Now you can open up a PDF in Acrobat, go to the Print dialog and select Acrobat Distiller as your printer. Then click Properties. Here you will need to select the paper size. Most likely it will not be one of the standard sizes, so just scroll over to one of the custom paper sizes, select it and press the Custom button. There you can just type the width and height numbers that are displayed at the bottom left of the Acrobat window. You need to do this so that Distiller will produce a PDF of the same size as the original. You also need to go to the Adobe PDF Settings tab of the Properties window. There you need to make sure your correct Distiller Conversion Settings are selected ("Manuals" if you are using my settings). You can also make Manuals the default settings if you don't want to have to do that everytime.

Now you click OK in the Properties dialog and OK in the Print dialog. It will prompt you for a new filename and then create your new, compressed PDF. Yay!

Distiller Oddities

An odd thing about Distiller that I learned is that it is impossible (as far as I know) for Distiller to create a PDF with some pages one size and some pages another size. If you really need to do that for some reason, you will need separate PDFs for each page size, then Distill them separately, then combine them into a single PDF after that.

Another strange thing about Distiller is that it doesn't seem to know how to handle pages where the width is greater than the height properly. This happens when you scan two pages as one image or certain other page layouts, like CD inserts. I haven't found a good way to deal with this so what I do is just rotate the pages so that the height is the greatest dimension. Then, I use Distiller to create a new PDF, then rotate them back. I'm guessing there's a better way, so if anyone knows one, let me know.