InDesign and Acrobat: PDF Partners

This article appeared in Issue 134 of InDesign Magazine.

While the applications can be used independently, you’ll gain powerful advantages by using the two of them together.

In the early days of desktop computing, PDF and Adobe Acrobat paved the way for documents to be created, viewed, and printed with fidelity across platforms. We take it for granted today, but in 1992 this idea was revolutionary. Some folks insisted it couldn’t be done. Happily, it was, and over the years, Acrobat was developed to fully exploit the capabilities of PDF. To this day, no other application provides the range of creation, editing, exchange, presentation and printing/preflighting capabilities that Acrobat has.

Developed just a few years later, Adobe InDesign fully supported the creation and import of PDF, and has developed a rich partnership with its elder software sibling. While each program can be used independently, you’ll gain powerful advantages by using the two of them together.

Creating and Optimizing PDF Files in InDesign

To have the most power when creating PDF files from InDesign, you need to use InDesign’s Adobe PDF (Print) export command. Only it allows you to create a PDF file optimized for the exact characteristics of the device and workflow you’re printing to. Other methods, like the old-fashioned technique of printing to PostScript, don’t offer the same power and efficiency. InDesign’s Adobe PDF (Interactive) export command is also useful for creating PDFs with features like form fields, buttons, and hyperlinks. We discuss creating interactive PDF in the sidebar, “The Limits of PDF Interactivity.”

Here are some advantages of using the PDF (Print) export feature in InDesign, and links to in-depth articles on each topic

from past issues of InDesign Magazine:

• You can create a PDF preset which groups together dozens of settings into a common, easy-to-use preset (Figure 1). These presets can also be customized, as Lukas Engqvist detailed in his article in Issue 131.

Figure 1. In InDesign, you can customize a PDF preset for a specific print workflow.

• Modern print workflows support important features like transparency and color management. PDF presets can support PDF/X industry standards—particularly the PDF/X-4 preset, which maintains transparency and all original color spaces until the moment of printing for greatest flexibility. See Claudia McCue’s article in Issue 82 for how to get great results in professional print projects.
• InDesign also gives you the ability to create PDF documents which are accessible to all users. This involves following a series of steps to structure and embed the necessary information so assistive software technology can make the PDF understandable to those with disabilities. It also means choosing the correct settings in your PDF preset. See Chad Chelius’s article in Issue 130 for a full run-down on creating accessible PDFs from InDesign.

Of course, once you export your PDF, you may need to do more work on it. Fortunately, Acrobat offers several ways to improve your productivity in a PDF print workflow, including a rich list of checks, fixups, and preflight profiles for all kinds of print workflows to head off problems before you submit files to your print service provider. For example, the best way to outline fonts is often to run a simple Preflight fixup in Acrobat (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Acrobat contains a variety of checks and fixups like this one, which provides the best way to outline fonts in a PDF file.

In addition, Acrobat has a set of Print Production tools like Output Preview and an object inspector to show you color separations, color warnings, and more. It also has tools for converting colors, as Matt Mayerchak explains in his article on  preparing and preflighting ads in Issue 69.

You can learn more cool tips for Adobe Acrobat in Chad Chelius’ article in this issue.

Creating PDF Forms in InDesign

As Chad Chelius describes in his article in Issue 133, there are several reasons why you might choose to design PDF forms in InDesign rather than Acrobat:

• You can make form documents which are more visually appealing than those created in Acrobat.
• You can create simple forms using InDesign tools you are already familiar with.
• You can use custom graphics and artwork.
• Chad’s article covers how to create form fields (Figure 3), anchor them to text, set the tab order, and more.

Figure 3. The Buttons and Forms panel in InDesign is where you can create PDF form fields.

Keep in mind that the PDF form features will only be guaranteed to work if your users stick to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader; third-party PDF readers may interpret the form fields poorly or not at all.

Here’s a cool tip from Sandee Cohen’s article on PDF forms in Issue 49: if you have simple forms, you can use the Acrobat Form Wizard to convert lines to text fields, squares to check boxes, and circles to radio buttons using auto-detection. If your document is set up cleanly, that may be all you need.

There are also some important features for working with forms in Acrobat which are not available in InDesign.

• You can validate a field to be within a particular range—using properties like a maximum number of characters, for example. You can make sure certain data is entered in the correct format—zip codes, phone numbers, dates, and credit card numbers.
• You can include bar codes.
• You can duplicate fields on multiple pages in an automated way.
• You can use built-in calculations on the data in fields using sum, product, average, minimum or maximum values (Figure 4). Additional calculations can also be added with JavaScript.

Figure 4. Acrobat can perform simple calculations in form fields—adding features not possible in an InDesign-created PDF form.

Note that if you need these sorts of form features regularly, you may want to invest in the third-party tool FormMaker, from ID-extras.

Creating a PDF Review Workflow in InDesign

You have probably exported a PDF for the purpose of sending it to a colleague or client to review and/or approve a document. It’s not hard, and Adobe Acrobat includes several types of PDF comments and mark-up for use in a review workflow. Comments from several reviewers can be imported, sorted, and managed. But the problem for most InDesign users for many years was the difficulty of incorporating those comments back into their InDesign document. It was a tedious, manual process. There is a third party plug-in (DTP Tools Annotations) that automates the process but only with the arrival of InDesign CC 2019 could this be done within InDesign itself with the Import PDF Comments command (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Beginning with InDesign CC 2019, the PDF Comments panel lets you import comments directly into InDesign and apply them.

In order to get the best results, you need to understand and follow two basic rules. First, only PDF exported from InDesign CC 2019 or later can be opened by this feature. (If you have an older InDesign version, you must open the original file in InDesign CC 2019 or later and re-save the file, then export a new PDF file and open it in Acrobat. If you have comments saved in an older PDF, you can export them as an FDF file and then import that into the new PDF.) Second, don’t edit your InDesign document until the review is completed. When you accept comments, the corrections (such as insert text and strikethrough) will be automatically made.

For all the details of this workflow, see Kelly Vaughn’s excellent article on importing PDF Comments in Issue 117.

Importing PDF Files into an InDesign Document

InDesign can import PDF documents as graphics into a layout. If you turn on the Import Options checkbox while placing a PDF (or hold the Shift key while choosing the file you want to place), you’ll see the Place PDF dialog box (Figure 6).

Figure 6. If you select Import Options when placing a PDF file, you can choose which pages and layers get placed, how they are cropped, and more.

PDF files can contain multiple pages, so you need a way to select the page you want to place. You can scroll through the pages to find the one you want. If you want to import more than one page, choose All or enter the page numbers  in the Range field (using commas or hyphens to denote multiple pages). When you import more than one page, it places them all in the Place cursor. (You can use InDesign’s included PlaceMultipagePDF JavaScript for more control using scripting. See this article for details on using it.)

Other things you can control are how pages are cropped (Bounding Box, Art, Crop, Trim, Bleed or Media), whether transparency is shown, and whether layers in a PDF included.

Editing PDFs in InDesign

Essentially, when you import a PDF page into InDesign, it’s being treated as a static piece of art. It cannot be edited, and you have no access to the text or graphics which are included in it.

To get access to the graphics or text, use the following Acrobat features (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Acrobat gives you the ability to export all images from a range of pages and choose their color space and resolution.

• In Acrobat, choose File > Export To > Microsoft Word to create a formatted Word document.
• In its File > Export To menu, Acrobat can also export to Spreadsheet, PowerPoint, and image formats which can then be imported into InDesign.
• For a single graphic, highlight with Acrobat’s Selection (black arrow) tool, then right-click and choose Save As. You can export in JPEG or TIFF formats. It will retain the original resolution and color space.
• Here’s an even more powerful method you can use when you want all the images on a page (or a set of pages) that lets you choose settings for color and resolution. First, if necessary, use Acrobat’s Organize tool and select Extract to copy the page(s) from which you want to export the graphics into a new document. Then, with those pages open, use Acrobat’s Export PDF tool. Select Image. Choose the file format you want to export. Check Export All Images. Click the gear icon to choose settings like resolution and color. Click Export. Select the folder where to save the files. The graphics with those settings are exported.

Editing PDFs in Illustrator

There’s an “old wives’ tale” you may hear that says Illustrator and PDF are the same so you can edit PDF files in Illustrator. Here’s the truth: It’s OK to edit PDFs saved directly from Illustrator because those are special files. The original Illustrator file is contained within the PDF, and that’s what you’re editing, provided that you’ve used the default option to retain Illustrator editing capabilities.

But Adobe Illustrator is not a general-purpose PDF file editor. If the PDF wasn’t created by Illustrator, you’re risking the possibility of file damage (losing font embedding or loss of content).  It’s preferable to return to the originating application to make edits and create a new PDF.

Plug-ins for Converting PDF to InDesign Documents

Do you need an InDesign document but the only thing you can find is the PDF file that was created from it? There are two InDesign plug-ins for you.

These plug-ins specialize in converting PDF files to InDesign documents. You’ll get the best results from them if the PDF was exported from InDesign, but you can convert PDFs from other sources too.

Recosoft’s PDF2ID (reviewed by Steve Caplin in Issue 131) is available in three versions—Lite $99.99; Standard $199; Professional $299). Markzware’s PDF2DTP is sold for $199 per year as an annual subscription.

A Deep Dialogue

If PDF is the lingua franca of publishing workflows, it only makes sense that both InDesign and Acrobat are fluent in the language of PDF. But as we’ve seen in this article, the story that starts in InDesign is often continued in Acrobat. And sometimes there is a back-and-forth conversation between the programs before the job is done. While you will continue to use InDesign to do the heavy lifting of designing layouts, I encourage you to explore what Acrobat can add to your workflow. Learning to leverage the strengths of both programs will provide you with new capabilities, and ultimately lead to a smoother workflow.