Let’s get a fact straight before we sneak a peek at the related nitty-gritty of the Adobe Acrobat 8 professional – The software has undergone a lot of changes though most of it is beyond the capability of the ordinary user to comprehend. All that have added up in the price of the package and at $499 (with $159 for upgrades) and the net result has favored…let’s dare say – the industry people who always operate in the high-level of technicalities.
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Now, let’s focus on the changes. At point blank, they are confusing and frustrating even to the long-time players in the print media industry. Doubts also remain regarding the feasibility of the new features, which might go unnoticed in many of the existing businesses. But is it all bad news?
Certainly not, for the paradoxical truth is there’s hope in despair. That brings into the picture an elegant, new interface studded with colorful icons instead of the version 7’s utilitarian tabs. Regarding access to other features, a simple right-click is far more smarter an option than going the other way round; the Acrobat 8 also places a separate icon for every selection on the desktop for a quicker access to the panel in future. But it’s indeed bad news that we don’t have an acre for the desktop.
But version 8 definitely deserves a pat on the back for the feature Adobe Connect; this meeting system resembles WebEx and MS NetMeeting and even at $395 per year, a personal meeting room works out cheaper than booking one in brick and mortar. Acrobat finally graduated to real-time.
Kudos must also go to the new feature that combines (not merge) all the supported file formats into a complete PDF package. Putting together several documents into one file definitely makes sending around a piece of cake that’s facilitated further by the options to remove headers, footers and watermarks from the original files. Instead, one can add a separate identifier for every page.
Among the security features, Acrobat now allows to remove sensitive information and add digital signature(s) to document(s), but only if the document(s) was created by Adobe Acrobat Pro. Else, 128-bit encryption is quite a satisfactory move.
But what do the Adobe team has to say about the small annoyances? The text selection tool comes first in this regard; precise selection is not always possible with it. The cursor also acts rather sluggish; would people be interested to make the software work on a lesser memory?
All creative professionals, be prepared to get frustrated with the version 8 Pro to the degree of delight that Acrobat 3D Version 8 and Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard once helped you to find. Go for the upgrade only if the new collaboration features are a necessity as much as the CMYK plate compression to the grayscale mode.