This month I'm going to switch gears from talking about image editing and color management to working with Adobe PDF files.
One of the very nice additions to Adobe Acrobat version 7 was the opportunity to enable PDF files for Adobe Reader users for Comment and Review. The term enabling simply means you add special features to a PDF file that permit Adobe Reader users to do more with a PDF document than the default tools and menu commands offer you with a PDF without any special features.
In order for a PDF to have these special features, at least one participant in your workgroup needs to have Adobe Acrobat Professional. This is the commercial viewer you need to purchase and not the free Adobe Reader software. Also, be aware that there are two commercial viewers - Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Professional. Only Acrobat Professional is capable of enabling PDFs with special features.
For the Acrobat Professional user, enabling documents for comment and review is a simple task. Just open a PDF file and visit the Document menu in Acrobat Professional and select Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader at the bottom of the menu. A Save As dialog box opens. Provide a file name and click the Save button. Your PDF document now has special features for use with Adobe Reader.
When you open an enabled PDF file in Adobe Reader, you find all the commenting and markup tools available for use to make markups and comments on the PDF file. The tools are all the same tools the Acrobat Standard and Professional users have available as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Most of the tools are self-explanatory. You can add a sticky note using the Note tool, mark up documents using the Text Edits tools, use rectangles, lines, and arrows for various markups. Almost all the tools have an associated popup note. Just double click any markup after using a tool to add the comment and double click with the Hand tool. A popup note appears where you can clarify your message. In Figure 2 you can see a highlight comment and the associated comment note.
Figure 2
Once you add comments in Adobe Reader, all edits you make on the file can be saved. By default, Adobe Reader only lets you save a copy of a PDF document. Any edits you make on a PDF file cannot be saved. However enabled files can be saved from Reader complete with any data you add to the document.
Comment Reviews
Another feature an Acrobat Professional user can employ is starting a comment review. This again is handled with a simple menu command. In Acrobat Professional the user clicks the Send for Review task button in the top-level toolbar to open a menu and chooses the Send by Email for Review menu command.
A Send by Email for Review wizard window opens and the Acrobat user steps through the wizard to complete the task. Among choices in the wizard you find adding email addresses to recipients and enabling features for Adobe Reader. When the final step in the wizard is completed, the open PDF file is attached to a new email message in the PDF author's default email program.
On the Adobe Reader end, you receive an email from a PDF author and double click the file attachment to open the attached PDF document in Adobe Reader. Again the comment tools appear where you can markup a document in a review session. When you finish, another button added to the Commenting toolbar is used to send your comments back to the PDF author. You click the tool button and your file with the comments are attached to a new email message in your default email program.
Returning to the PDF author, an email message is received with the attached file. The Acrobat user double clicks the file attachment and the comments you made are integrated into the author's PDF document. As the PDF author receives additional comments from other reviewers, all the comments are collected in the same PDF file.
Adding Stamp Comments
A very nice feature you have available in Adobe Reader when adding comments is the ability to paste any information you copy to the clipboard as a Stamp comment. You can copy a body of text, an image, or take screen shot. The screen shot option is particularly helpful if you need to get some tech support from an IT department. On Windows just press the Shift key or maybe the Function key and the Prt Scr key on your keyboard when a dialog box opens to take a screen shot. If you want just the dialog box without the background, add the Alt key. Computers vary so the key combinations may be a little different on your system. On the Mac press Command + Option + 4, then press the Spacebar and click on a dialog box. The Mac doesn't copy the file to the clipboard so you need to use another step. The file is saved to your desktop after clicking on the dialog box. Open the file in Acrobat and click the Snapshot tool. Drag around the image and release the mouse button. The image is then copied to the clipboard.
On your PDF document enabled for commenting and shown in Adobe Reader, just press Control + C (Windows) or Command + C (Macintosh). Your clipboard data appears as a Stamp comment. Double click with the Hand tool and a popup note opens where you can type a message as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
This kind of use for commenting in Adobe Reader opens up many possibilities. You could use an enabled PDF document for reporting technical problems to an IT department, assemble images on a blank page for layout instructions, or use a more traditional review for documents needing your approval. The point is, there are many uses for Adobe Reader beyond what the default tools and menu commands offer you. To use the comment and review features in Adobe Reader, you need to download the most current version of Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is available as a free download from Adobe Systems at: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.
If you have any questions about enabling PDFs for comment and review or any other questions related to Acrobat or Adobe Reader, visit my blog on the Acrobat Users Web site hosted by Adobe Systems. Log on to my blog at: www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/tedpadova.
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