From the stone age to the digital age, Adobe Acrobat DC, and its predecessors, brought our newspaper workflow to a whole new level.
June 22, 2022
From the stone age to the digital age, Adobe Acrobat DC, and its predecessors, brought our newspaper workflow to a whole new level.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Acrobat DC
Adobe Acrobat DC plays an integral role in our company. We publish a weekly newspaper. Our workflow involves Acrobat at multiple junctions. From making and sending ad proofs to clients, extracting type from legal notices, sending the pages to the press 60 miles away, uploading the digital version online, to sending invoices to clients. We also do commercial printing jobs, which also include PDFs at every stage. While the free Reader can be used for a few jobs, most of what we do requires the full version. I've been in this business for over 20 years, and remember the times before Adobe Acrobat DC changed our workflow for the better. (Yes, I've driven physical hot wax pasted "mechanicals" that 60 miles to the printer, waited for them to print the papers, and drove them back. Now we just upload PDF files and the papers are delivered to our doorstep. Don't miss those "good old days" one bit!
- Perfect for sharing files with others. Creates a file that can be viewed on virtually any device or platform, and they look as intended, regardless of what software it was created in, or what fonts are used.
- Security levels are available to prevent actions depending on your selections. For instance, when we send a proof of print order to a client to approve before we print it, we can make it viewable yet not able to be printed, protecting our design work.
- Fillable forms can be created easily from regular form files, and many fields are auto-detected and set up effortlessly. The ability to add verified digital signatures was a real game-changer to workflows.
- Occasionally very slow to load. Sure, we make some big files (lol) but it still seems slow on my Mac with the beefed-up ram.
- Sometimes some elements on a page won't load at all, so I have to flip to another tab, or to the home screen and come back for it to load. Bug?
- Creation of PDFs using distiller or direct export/save as features in the programs we use.
- The edit feature lets us have control over our finished pdfs, especially ones submitted by others that may need some work before being print-ready. Easy to do in Adobe Acrobat DC.
- Print Production tools that allow us to analyze and fix color and other issues before sending to print.
- Adobe Acrobat DC, and its predecessors, took our community newspaper publishing workflow from the stone age of manual paste-ups to the modern age of file portability. Where we used to have to drive the pages to the press 60 miles away, they are now carried digitally, making a huge impact on our business.
- Being able to secure proof files protects the hours we have invested in design work from being taken elsewhere for printing without any compensation for the labor we have invested.
- Since the PDFs we generate can be viewed on any device or platform, it works perfectly for creating digital downloads we can sell on our website. This has created a new revenue stream outside our traditional circulation methods.
Good security should be mostly unnoticeable. It's when security is bad that you see all the breaches and issues that bring it to light. So in that respect, no news is good news. We haven't experienced any data breaches or legal issues that trace back to Adobe Acrobat DC. The in-program security options are something we make use of regularly to limit printing and extraction of preview proofs we send to clients.
Do you think Adobe Acrobat delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Adobe Acrobat's feature set?
Yes
Did Adobe Acrobat live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Adobe Acrobat go as expected?
No
Would you buy Adobe Acrobat again?
Yes