Know Your PDF

What Does PDF Stand For?

PDF is an acronym for the Adobe program “Portable Document Format”. Adobe PDF, which is generally accepted as the paramount format for universal document exchange, is widely used by web writers, publishers, graphic designers, and even laypersons. The letters are a code that indicates a file extension, like those you may see at the end of a file name. (For example, know_pdf_story.pdf). You can think of it as a file recipe. It describes the file ingredients and informs your operating system how to prepare it for electronic utilization. As the preeminent format for universal document exchange, PDF is a very powerful program.

Why is PDF So Popular and Powerful?

Adobe PDF owes its power and popularity to five significant characteristics:

1. Compatibility – PDF is a cross-platform format. This means that it can re-create documents regardless of where they were initially created. In other words, PDF works with most other programs. Furthermore, it maintains the original formatting and style of the document, including color, font, and imagery precisely as they were originally created. With Adobe Acrobat Reader, anybody on any computer anywhere, running any application version, can identify, read and print identical PDF files. This means anyone, including you!
2. Usability - PDF files are user-friendly and easily navigated. They have useful navigation tools such as structured bookmarks, internal and external links, thumbnail page views, search capabilities, magnification options, and multi-directional buttons.
3. Accuracy – PDF files are super -printable and viewable. PDF uses the PostScript language-imaging model, which ensures true, exact, crisp printing. PDF files viewed on –screen maintain precise color and clarity in magnifications of over 500%, regardless of hardware or software variation.
4. Convenience – PDF files are smaller in size than original source files, and much easier to download and view. PDF files offer page-at-a-time downloads, which enables you to read and edit the initial pages of a document before the entire file has been received. In addition, since the size is smaller you save time by being able to download the document faster than a source file.
5. Security – PDF files offer broad security safeguards. Users can maintain complete control over sensitive data by assigning security passwords to PDF documents before sending them. Furthermore, you can utilize digital signature technology to authenticate and secure your PDF files. In addition, there is a PDF feature called Self Sign which allows both creators and users to limit and track access to vital documents by using an encoded digital signature. This is the feature that lets users say cool things such as “Sorry, you are not authorized to view this material”.

But Where do PDF Files Originate?

So far we’ve been discussing existing PDF files. But where do PDF files originate and how are they created? The following are the five basic techniques for creating PDF files:

• Adobe Acrobat – this is the main Adobe software for creating and modifying PDF files. Among other methods, this software allows users to originate a PDF file by dropping and dragging a file into Acrobat, selecting the format directly from Microsoft Office, or converting scanned or web documents directly.
• Adobe PDF Writer – this software imitates a printer driver in order to create PDF documents from almost any Windows application.
• Adobe Acrobat Distiller – this software is an automated high- volume conversion of PostScript files to PDF, and is work-group oriented.
• Adobe Acrobat Capture – this is software which is designed specifically for the conversion of scanned image files to PDF, and is optimized for character recognition and clean-up.
• Other Software – There are other Adobe graphical and publishing software programs like FrameMaker, PageMaker, and Illustrator, which can be used to automatically create PDF files. In addition, there are third party software programs that offer the capability to create PDF files, such as EZ-PDF, Active PDF Printer, and QuarkXPress.