A good application with some room for improvement
June 21, 2022
A good application with some room for improvement
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Acrobat DC
We use Adobe Acrobat to view and collaborate on book files--paged manuscripts, cover designs, and so forth. It's the industry-standard tool, and external partners like authors (who are usually practicing attorneys, consultants, or university faculty) can use the free reader application Adobe Reader DC to interface with the files in a more limited capacity that still gets the job done. Internal staff, vendors, and SME talent can use the commenting tool in the app to mark up changes to implements by our compositors during the production process.
Pros
- Does a good job of articulating the different elements in a PDF manuscript for the technical people while having a UI that is accessible enough for casual users.
- Seamlessly allows simple last-minute edits to documents.
- Commenting tools are very easy to use and understand.
- Integrates nicely with Adobe Sign for contracts.
Cons
- It is poorly optimized for collaboration on projects that need a lot of development. When you have a lot of comments in a document, the program is sluggish and resource-intensive compared to applications that are doing a lot more with the same amount of CPU and RAM.
- Given the above, it's overpriced. Adobe may wish to consider whether they will forever remain the standard software used by publishers for the purposes it is used today.
- Commenting.
- "Edit PDF."
- Fill & Sign.
- Security features for distribution of copyrighted materials.
- Reduced user error during book production.
- Streamlined processes.
This is a little bit tangential, but we have adopted Adobe Sign as our application of choice for gathering signatures from external collaborators for new projects and products. I'm sure there are many benefits to using this while also having Acrobat licenses which I am not aware of.
In addition, as a book publisher, there are instances in which a person who uses one of our texts has students who are not able to use a book on the first day of class. Acrobat makes it easy enough to cut out the first chapter or two of a book, watermark it for the specific user, and password-protect the file. There may be ways around these issues, but to date, I've never seen any of our partial files circulated in this way ending up as pirated PDFs on the sites that provide such services.
In addition, as a book publisher, there are instances in which a person who uses one of our texts has students who are not able to use a book on the first day of class. Acrobat makes it easy enough to cut out the first chapter or two of a book, watermark it for the specific user, and password-protect the file. There may be ways around these issues, but to date, I've never seen any of our partial files circulated in this way ending up as pirated PDFs on the sites that provide such services.
- Foxit PDF Editor (FoxitPhantom) and Javelin
Acrobat is still a far more robust piece of software than its competitors, and it has cross-compatibility on MacOS and Windows. Javelin looks nice but does not have the detailed editing features needed in publishing, and Foxit is fine, but it's not something everyone is familiar with, so there would likely be more challenges moving all of our vendors over to using it than are worth dealing with. In the long run, I imagine the lost productivity would be more expensive than continuing to use Adobe's suite of products for everything.
Do you think Adobe Acrobat delivers good value for the price?
No
Are you happy with Adobe Acrobat's feature set?
Yes
Did Adobe Acrobat live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Adobe Acrobat go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Adobe Acrobat again?
Yes
Comments
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