Creating *.pdfs - A Step by Step Process?

[DM Magic]

If any publishers of *.pdfs would be so kind, a step-by-step account on how a *.pdf is created would be great! What programs do you use? Do you start in Microsoft Word and move on to Quark?

I find that when I create *.pdfs from Word, they don't come out exactly as they look on the screen.

[annadobritt]

I do the initial document in Word 2002, then save it as either as a doc or rtf.

From there, I import it into Adobe InDesign 2.0.

Then once I'm satisfied with the layout of the document in ID, I export it as a pdf.

[jaerdaph]

Originally posted by Raistlin Majere
I find that when I create *.pdfs from Word, they don't come out exactly as they look on the screen.

Back in the day, Stu Turner, John Mangrum and I used to tear our hair out trying to PDF the Secrets of the Kargatane Ravenloft Netbooks and other goodies from the original Word 97 files. Those files was heavily formatted, and depending on which computer you were using, the pagination and formatting were always off or looked different. Don't get me started on font embedding either

The problem mostly went away when we all upgraded to Word 2000 or greater. Switching to using Acrobat Distiller rather than PDF Writer when making the PDFs helped too. Fortunately Acrobat 5.0 was an improvement as well and PDF Writer is for the most part gone. We're certainly getting much better results with the 3e Ravenloft Web enhancements and previews.

For the PDFs on my Web site, I paste everthing from Word into Publisher, and do formatting and layout there. I find it makes a nicer PDF than Word, and you do have more options. Publisher can hardly be called a professional desktop publishing program though, but it serves my purposes.

Edit: One more thing - Word does something whack to graphics that can cause weird problems too. I don't get those problems with Publisher.

[annadobritt]

I find that just leaving a space where I want to place an image while using Word, is much easier than placing the image than importing it to InDesign.

[Drawmack]

the whack thing that word does with images is it turns them into a bitmap and stores them inside the file. The problem with bitmaps is that if your cmyk filtering on your monitor is messed up the print will be too.

[HellHound]

Here is how *I* created all but one of the Ambient Inc. PDFs

- original document is in MSWord 2000 (sometimes in WordPerfect 9 - but rarely these days)

- graphical elements are done in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (well, 5.0 for our first release, 5.5 for the next two, 6.0 after that), they are then tweaked for intensity and contrast (increasing both) using either Photoshop or ThumbsPlus (I find that otherwise they come out too pale in the PDF copy).

- I then open Quark XPress. I import the text without any formatting notations. I then format and layout the text, incorporating the graphical elements and creating the tables on the fly (for Prestige Class progressions, etc).

- Print, selecting Adobe Distiller 5.0 as my printer. Do NOT export as EPS files and then distill them into the PDF as this creates extremely large files for no good reason (A perfect example is the original release of Portable Hole Full of Beer, which was created by distilling EPS pages at 11 megs, vs 1.5 megs for a direct PDF output).

- Open the document in Adobe Acrobat 5.0, add bookmarks, open options, document properties, etc.

- Save PDF.

[mythusmage]

I use Appleworks 6 for composing and formatting , then a bare bones PDF distiller known as PrinttoPDF for conversion. PrinttoPDF is a printer driver, so I use the Chooser (a Mac thing) to select PtP, and then 'print out' the file to PDF.

PtP substitutes it's own fonts for the ones you chose, so I do everything in Palatino. That being one of PtP's substitute fonts. You can do non-standard fonts as bitmaps, but PtP recommends you reserve that for dingbats and similar fonts.

So far my first 'product' seems to have worked out well. (See the "Playing with Dragons 2 (The Remake) thread in the d20 Publishers forum. Playing with Dragons (The Director's Cut) is coming up in about a week, with black dragon info included.)

When I have the money, and the extra RAM has been installed, I expect to switch my word processing to an app known as Nisus (nice us) Writer 6.5. A heavy duty word processor. With the PDF distilling taken over by a third party app I ran across on the Web. (Nisus Writer has a button bar just for long documents, and a 513 page PDF manual available for free download at the Nisus site. However, it's Mac only. )

BTW, PtP has one big drawback. It does not do Post Script files. Won't even touch them. So don't ask. (And me with a Post Script printer driver. )

[Henry]

A question for Anna:

Have you used Adobe Pagemaker before? If so, what would you say are the most important differences between Adobe Pagemaker and InDesign? I have tried using Pagemaker 6.5 in the past, to make a PDF of my homebrew campaign world info. My problem is that I became quite frustrated with Adobe's setup for its software,especially titles and tables. Is In design a massive improvement on tables, or do they work about the same?

Currently, I exported all of my material from Pagemaker over to MS Publisher 2000. While I enjoy the setup of Publisher, I grow increasingly frustrated both with the size of the documents, and the sluggishness as I add material - and this is with using linking instead of embedding.

I am thinking of in the future (after Gencon) seriously investing in a good publishing package, and have a toss-up between InDesign, and Corel's Ventura. (To give you an idea, I absolutely worship the program Corel Draw, and can make it perform almost every function EXCEPT complex Desktop publishing.)

[HellHound]

InDesign's BIGGEST advantage is the REALLY well done table support. It handles tables VERY nicely.

I haven't seen a Corel fan in a while, Henry. My sister-in-law was VP e-commerce for them for a few years.

[annadobritt]

I never used PageMaker, Henry, because I heard about the problems of importing tables.

InDesign does a great job importing tables from Word. Every table I've imported looks the way it should. And I found it an easy program to learn how to use.

[Rifter]

Originally posted by HellHound
Here is how *I* created all but one of the Ambient Inc. PDFs

Thanks for the info, HellHound. I am planning on putting it to good use, in the comming month. I know how to create web pages, not printed pages, so this is very valuable information.

[Henry]

Originally posted by HellHound
I haven't seen a Corel fan in a while, Henry. My sister-in-law was VP e-commerce for them for a few years.

I have used it since Corel Draw 5 - It takes my award for "Best-designed Program of all-time." Beats the pants off Adobe Illustrator. I have used it for publishing, banners/signs/greeting card-type work, and for designing adventures in. I still use version 9, and once I have fundage want to upgrade to version 11.

But thanks for the info on InDesign. I may have to take the time to download the demo at home.

[DM Magic]

All this is good stuff! Thanks for the info, all!

[HellHound]

I also prefer Corel Draw 9 to Illustrator 9. I've been using CorelDraw since the way old days when I actually had to get a copy of Windows 3.11 to run it on. I think that was Corel Draw 3.0

Although since Nadine is no longer VP at Corel, we haven't had any free upgrades since version 9 either (or Corel Office 2000).

[jaerdaph]

Recommendations for Creating PDF Files from Word with Acrobat 5.0