Adamant Entertainment PDF Products

[Threedub]

I bought Hot Pursuit, Posthuman, and Netspace from Adamant as PDFs and all three are solid products, but the use of graphics and border shading is way to heavy for me to want to print them--and I do want to print them, I don't play with a laptop.

I've written to Adamant twice about the possibility of a "graphics light" update and have received no response. Has anyone else had this problem with these products? How did you solve it?

 

[Arrellion]

I have not purchased any of their products but if you have access to the Acrobat (not reader) program or something similar you can use the delete object tool to temporarily
get rid of the borders and pictures for printing purposes.

Later,

Arrel

 

[Roudi]

Unfortunately, the non-Reader, full version of Acrobat is pretty durn expensive.

If the text is selectable, you could always try copying & pasting the text into a word processing program. It wouldn't be pretty, but with some work, you'd have an easily-printable version of the product.

I sure hope Adamant responds to you. They're usually pretty good about responding to customer feedback.

 

[GMSkarka]

I've written to Adamant twice about the possibility of a "graphics light" update and have received no response.

That's strange. I haven't received anything from you. (I'll check my spam folder, though -- that might be the solution)

But to the issue at hand--

A bit of explanation: I'm a 12 year veteran of the print side of this industry, and so I lay out our products based on that experience...I'm always thinking of presentation on par with the print side of the business.

I never worried about "graphics light" versions, because, as has been stated here, people can shut off graphics with Acrobat, or copy-and-paste the text if its really that big of an issue (we NEVER disable that function, unlike some PDF publishers).

At this point, producing a secondary version just for the handful of folks who have issues with the graphics (but are not wanting to take any of the above steps) would essentially be double the work (laying out two versions of the book) for one purchase price, which, given the razor-thin profit margins of this industry, is not something that I'd particularly be interested in, unless there was a much larger call for it. Right now, I can count the number of complaints about our graphics on one hand.

 

[Threedub]

Thanks for the responses. I did send email to gms[AT]adamantentertainment[DOT]com on 3/20/2005 and marketing[AT]adamantentertainment[DOT]com 4/14/2005, if that helps sort through the spam folder.

I only have the reader, no luck in turning off graphics. I can cut/paste, which I do when I want to make up my own rules tables or such, but I'd rather not have to do it for printing out the full book. I am an opponent of DRM PDFs though, and refuse to buy them (though Watermark is fine with me), so thank you for not going that route.

I may just be spoiled from buying all those Malhavoc products, where the graphics are line drawings with no strong borders--or the PDFs with a "view" file and a lighter "print" file. I really don't want to not have graphics, rather just "lite" graphics without colored borders or backgrounds. I do understand that with products like Netspace where the graphics are photos, there really isn't an alternative.

Again, thanks for the suggestions and I'll see what I can do.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

He is not the only one to make complaints about the PDFs. I have as well, your reply was 'buy the print version'. Frankly I found that response annoying, and have started being more careful about my Adamant purchases because of that one statement blowing off a legitimate concern.

The Auld Grump

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

How would one go about shutting off graphics in Reader? Color me silly, just have never seen that option.

-fje

 

[drose25]

You know, 0one Games has those blue maps which are pdfs that you can turn on/off certain graphic elements (like the grids, etc) by clicking a box in the pdf. Maybe the publisher can consider adding a similar switch to the borders. That way they don't have to re-set a graphic light version.

 

[Crothian]

At this point, producing a secondary version just for the handful of folks who have issues with the graphics

I can assure you it is more then a handful of people, it is one of the biggest complaints I hear about publishers that doi not offer a printible version. It is one of the reasons I make sure to comment on how printible something is in each PDF review I do.

 

[D_Sinclair]

Another thing folks can try is upgrading Acrobat Reader. Adamant's products are output for Acrobat 6, maybe even 7. I accidentally opened them with Acrobat 4 and couldn't see any text thanks to the fact that the pages were completely black. Reader 5 was only a marginal improvement over that.