PDF & Adobe acrobat tips needed

[Shapermc]

I have Acrobat 5.0 and am planning on releasing a few PDF documents over the next couple of months [mainly d20 CoC material that I am converting with author consent] and I am looking for good tips from the pro's that use this program.

I am looking for things that end up looking good/bad. I am looking for features to use/avoid. I am looking for the trick of the trade tips you know those one's right? Do you use Word to set everything up or another program?

Please I want this first release to look really good and right now I just stare at the text that my "editor" sent back and am having difficulty with my "artistic vision". . .

 

[jaerdaph]

I have used both MS Word and MS Publisher to create PDF documents for both my own Web site and the Secrets of the Kargatane Ravenloft site. If your document is going to contain image files, I recommend MS Publisher because Word does funky things to images, which usually results in larger PDF file sizes. It was recently explained to me why on the boards here - something to do with the way Word allows you to resize etc.

It's also best to optimize images for file size in a program like Macromedia's Fireworks before inserting them into documents you intend to PDF.

If you are just using Word without images, you will probably be okay.

 

[Gargoyle]

We're really just beginners at this as well, so I'll defer to the more experienced PDF guys like Ambient. But I will say that what we have learned is that using Word 2000 and printing to the Acrobat Distiller to create a PDF works fine for us, and may be where you want to start. We also use Macromedia Fireworks (which I highly recommend) to manipulate images before inserting them into Word.

Note that we stay away from fancy layouts and borders because we've found that it takes time away from game design and playtesting and most PDF customers don't like their ink cartridges drained by such things anyway. But if you're making a PDF that is more decorative, there are better programs to use than Word that will give you more professional results; we know MS Word very well, so we're leveraging those skills so that we can get on with publishing.

We've also learned to sample our art at 144 dpi. It seems to be a good balance of print and screen quality vs file size. And we've played with the amount of compression that Distiller does to keep the quality up and the file size down; I recommend experimenting.

There was another thread on this subject some time ago that may help:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32599

 

[Shapermc]

Hmmm. Looks like InDesign will really go along way. There is a trial version that looks promising, and then I will see if there is a copy at work somewhere and just finish every thing here (I think that we got some huge Adobe package somewhere, but don't know if it has InDesign)

Thanks for the link to that thread.

Does anyone have any tips about images as far as like background ones? I also want to have a small skull with an open mouth behind the page # (so it looks like the skull is holding the Page # in its mouth). Should I make each one an image or is there another way to do this?

Recomendation is needed for this question. I want to have a player handout/picture section in the back for the DM to easily make for the players (just print that out and show image/give map at the right time similar to the Banewarrens released by Malhavoc) and I was thinking of making a grafix lite version (mainly text). Do you think that I should leave off these handouts for that version or just make like small versions or. . . .?

 

[HellHound]

Set up the skull behind the page number as a graphic in your master page, so that it appears there in each new page you create. Acrobat will notice that it is the exact same graphic file being loaded each time and will only save the file once. Repeated use of graphical elements is very economical (vis-a-vis file size) with Acrobat.

Other things to remember - make sure to make good use of bookmarks. And test your bookmarks after you make them. Make sure you set your bookmarks with your pages set to the same view mode that you have selected for your Open Options. Otherwise you'll have the document open in one view, and the bookmarks will not only change pages, but also change view type.

Set the Open Options for the PDF to open to the page you find is the most useful. For most products we open to the cover page, but someties opening to the table of contents, introduction or even the credits page is useful.

Optimize your images. For web and e-book use, 150 dpi is fine - it doesn't look too ugly, and doesn't take up too much room. We actually comission our artwork at 150 dpi now. Don't make the mistake of doing your cover graphic as a low-res Jpeg. Very little turns me off more than visible jpeg artifacting on the cover of a book. Several e-publishers have made this mistake in the past - some worse than others - the cover ends up looking fuzzy and weird and unprofessional - always store your cover graphic as a TIF or PNG file without any form of compression before importing it into your document.

 

[Strutinan]

Never underestimate the usefulness of MS Paint. For page numbers, I've found its easiest to make several small graphics files, numbered 0-9, each with the same number as the only graphical information inside the image.

Once you have a number in the size and font you want, we'll use "0" for reference, you use the selection tool to move it to the upper-left corner. Make sure it is only one pixel from the left and the top. The Zoom feature is very handy for this.

Then you can go into the Image menue, and select Attributes. Tell it ot measure by pixels. Now re-size the image until there is only a one-pixel border on the number's right and bottom edges.

Save the file as "Number 0". Now do the other nine numbers.

Now using MS Word, on your document's inside cover page (which should be blank anyways) import each of the number files and arrange them in order 0-9. Resize them to suit your skull-image's mouth.

Select the "1" and copy it to your clipboard.

Resize the document to a 10% view. THis will put them going left to right on your monitor.

Count over from the left to the first actual page of text (which should be the third one in). Click on that page. Hit "Paste".

Go down that column, repeating the procccess, until you reach the end of the column.

Repeat this procedure for the rest of the numbers.

Now go through left-to-right for the 10's digits, then the 100s (if you have any).

All thats left is going through each page and dragging the numbers to thier appropriate places.

I know this seems like alot of work, but the alternative (importing each number sepperately) is a REAL pain!

 

[HellHound]

Strutinan, why not just use TEXT page numbers over a graphical background?

That's how I've done it for all my products, including Librum Equitis volume 1 which was done with a word processor instead of a desktop publishing software. Plus, you can select the start point for pagination in this manner, so you can actually add pages before the numeric page sequence (such as a few roman numeral pages for introductions and forewords).

This way, you only have the one graphic to include in the PDF and the embedded fonts take care of the page numbers.

 

[Strutinan]

I tried that, but the page numbers didn't come out centered in my border art. Besides, this method can be used to create page numbers of ANY size and font, simply by altering the size and font of the source in Paint.

If you know of a way to do all of these using ONLY MS Word, I would LOVE to hear it! It would save me an hour of hand-numbering each book:
a) Make font and size of the numbers different from the main body text.
b) Move the numbers once they are assigned so that they will be located in the border art properly.
c) Center the numbers in reference to a fixed point correlating to the "bubble" zone's center, so that the numbers always appear to be in the middle of the field.

 

[HellHound]

I am not that experienced with MSword, I must admit, but successfully did it with no problems in WordPerfect.

 

[jaerdaph]

I tried that, but the page numbers didn't come out centered in my border art.

This is a actually a good example of why you might choose MS Publisher over MS Word. Each item on your page (be it an image, text block, or pagination number) lives in its own box and you lay it out where you want it on the page. You could add your background border image in an image box, then place a text box over the area of the border image where you want the numbers to be, and set it as an automatically calculating pagination number. You would do this on the page background view so it shows up on every page (with the correct page number), then switch back to the regular page view to add your text boxes for your publication's actual text. Of course, you would have to have separate Publisher files for the front cover and the back cover, but what you do is create 3 different PDFs and merge them together into one file through Acrobat.

Publisher is a lot easier to use than it looks if you invest a day or two of training time on your own with it, and you can get the same effects you do in Word, sometimes better. And since it's part of the Microsoft Office family, you can cut and paste formatted text from Word directly to Publisher.

It's not as professional as QuarkExpress or PageMaker, but it is simple to use if you are familiar enough with MS Office programs.