Acrobat Professional 2017

[Brittany Bhadd]

Thats it! You now have another instance of Acrobat running. This is helpful when sending say 4 very large files to 4 different printers all at the same time. You can have each instance of acrobat sending 4 different large documents to 4 different printers simultaneously.

Another possibility, if you have enabled the option to open documents as new tabs in the same window, and provided you have several such open tabs, is to drag one of the tabs out of the Acrobat window using your mouse. A new instance of Acrobat will then be created, containg that tab.

A bit a longer answer: Acrobat is not set up to run in multiple instances. What you can do, and this is now also sanctioned and supported by Adobe, is running Reader with the same major version number (Acrobat XI and Reader XI, or Acrobat X and Reader X).

If you happen to be on Mac, it is not sanctioned officially by Adobe, but if you know what you are doing, you can run different versions of Acrobat concurrently; I have a development where for changing the document, JavaScript has to be off, but for testing it has to be on. So, I run Acrobat 7 with JavaScript deactivated and Acrobat 9 or XI with active JavaScript, and for displaying important documentation, I have Reader XI active as well.

Tried PDF Exchange, PDFSam, PDF Architect, Bullzip, Sumatra, PDF Creator, PDFill (which had the best value -$20- for pro if you can deal with the hideous interface) Foxit Reader (trial of Phantom PDF) Nitro..there's some more that I can't remember. Only program I've discovered is Callas

Looks like I'm sticking with Acrobat Pro 9 then which does the job on checking separations and ink density, Verify PDF/X standards conformance, but won't run on new macs FFS - can't believe theres no alternative?!?!?!?!

When i was using Illustrator, I did all my work using the Pantone spot colors, then Illustrator would handle the color separations. I can't remember if ink density was an option but AI did my seps and then i could use whatever pdf program I wanted from there. While I was looking for a similar solution when I first started with Affinity, I made my designs and exported them to do color separations with Scribus (which is free) and that worked well enough. Then I discovered that Affinity's predecessor, (the Plus products) DrawPlusX8 also does color separations and I began using that. Then I came across an article showing how to get Illustrator CS2 for free, so I did that and it also handles color seps (and text warping!) just fine, despite its age and the fact that I'm using Windows 10. As far as PDF programs, I am currently using the free PDF24 products, which are free. I hope any of that was in some way helpful.

Thanks for this highly interesting discussion. I am also looking for a Acrobat Pro replacement. Acrobat DC Preflight feature is the only missing link to me e.g. reliable color management and full support for ISO PDF standards.

Pitstop and pdfToolbox seems to be the only "real" alternatives for reliable print preflight jobs. However if you don't work a for a big print house, it looks like a bit over-size. PDF Checkpoint (Mac) offers some interesting but limited feature set. I am going to take a closer look at pdfToolbox.

Damn - in that case I hope Serif continues to develop for El Capitan as I'm gonna have to stick with Acrobat 9.5.5 which works great in El Capitan - wish I could afford pdftoolbox - shame they can't do a trimmed down version for skint freelancers

You can install El Capitan into a Virutal Machine on Mojave and run Acrobat 9/X (or any other such important apps) from there.

I'm doing so with my Adobe CS 6.5, it's a bit slower, obviously, since you run two OS' at once, one virtualized, but better than nothing.

This is a very interesting discussion as I have been asking myself for some time now how I could possibly replace Acrobat Pro once I've moved completely to the Affinity apps and a new Mac running (for the time being) Mojave.

Sure, especially when used seldom and more privately instead of business oriented. - For simpler PDF checks things like PDF Checkpoint and the like are maybe a much cheaper alternate, though however I never tried that one out so far and thus can't say anything about it's capabilities.

For simpler PDF checks things like PDF Checkpoint and the like are maybe a much cheaper alternate, though however I never tried that one out so far and thus can't say anything about it's capabilities.

Thanks for sharing. Indeed PDF-XChange Editor Plus ships with some interesting features. It's Windows only, though. As already pointed out PDF-XChange Editor Plus is an PDF-Editor and PDF Viewer for simple office tasks. It's not intended for prepress.

It has of course been nice to be able to use Acrobat Pro and its preflight tools to ensure that everything is "really" ok, and I still do this as a kind of compulsory act when delivering anything to the printer, but much more simpler verifier and troubleshooter should suffice to notify problems in the output. I would gladly pay something for this kind of a tool, but not more than e.g. for a font manager. Nothing to be rent.

And yeah: good font managers are another thing... (having nothing to do with the Affinty apps, though). The 100 bucks for Font Explorer X make me swallow, in fact, but given my usage of quite an extensive font library and my wish to have some solid structure here, it possibly seems justifiable (all others except Suitcase Fusion, an really old version which I've been able to use up to El Capitan on my Mac, are lacking on or the other feature I'd like to have). But it's almost double the price for an Affinity app nevertheless...

I'm quite certain, however, I'd actually pay as much for an up to date PDF tool (meeting the requirements mentioned before), as long as I cannot be sure my PDFs from AD or AP are really 100% standards compliant, even if I do everything right (within the limits of those applications).

That, however, seems like a valid point to me. Given that with Designer and especially Publisher you are meant to be able to create print ready files, it should be of absolute priority to Serif Software to ensure that PDFs output from these applications fully meet the standards of the print and prepress industry 100% (provided you set everything to the correct values/options during output, that is). I haven't actually dared to deliver PDFs from AD or AP to print myself so far, but I've noticed (following prepress community discussions) that there obviously have been some problems and concerns with/about full compliance to current PDF standards. I'm not sure if these have been sorted out yet.

With that PDF-libraries today neccessary in every software output for printing/prepress and those libraries built-in at hardware in every raster image prozessor in prepress workflows (!), you can't actually and definitely do anything, but to tie yourself to that technology. I myself am from times *before* Adobe and PDF. Can you image to print a prepress document without using PDF (HPGL and the like besides)? And the intestines of PDF are still secret to Adobe and licences are locked libraries but not "open source".

Although I actually do anything to use the Affinity solutions, to support that brave company and support that project, I'm really unsure about, what future may bring to us: Adobe is sole, dictatorial owner of the very, very last step of *any* design idea: printing and distribution via PDF. And as long as Affinity may be forced to licence the PDF technology at Adobe , too, in order to get "real clean output and printing results", Adobe has the force to badger Affinity ...

... Adobe is sole, dictatorial owner of the very, very last step of *any* design idea: printing and distribution via PDF. And as long as Affinity may be forced to licence the PDF technology at Adobe , too, in order to get "real clean output and printing results", Adobe has the force to badger Affinity ...

callas and Adobe share certain technologies, but the main guts of what makes Acrobat used so much in prepress is developed by callas and licensed to Adobe for use in Acrobat by callas and is in their tool, pdfToolbox.

For me there remains the question of the theme starter: Why there are no professional PDF editors/prepress PDF utilities or alternatives - except those as expensive as Acrobat Pro ...? (but also: good work justifies a decent prize!).

As for costs and competition, I think that is due to a limited market. And the fact that unless a company reinvents the proverbial wheel, they, like Adobe, would need to license the technology from callas which would make it also expensive.

As for me, there are much to my regret no new information concerning a real alternative to Acrobat Pro. I would be happy scratching off any Adobe product from the hard disc of my Mac, private and in business. May be it is Callas or may be it is Adobe which rules the whole line from graphical software output up to the printing plate. And any raster image processor is based on postscript resp. pdf technology. In my opinion there is no way out. And this is called "ingenious".

Like others, I long used Acrobat Pro (good old 32 bit CS6) for checking spot colour separations before sending off that print-ready PDF. I'd check on-screen that each of the spots was on a separate plate and knocking out or overprinting as expected. The three apps listed here are just absurdly expensive when that's all you need to do:

PDF documents are a common fixture in both academic and professional settings, but they are often inaccessible scans of physical documents. These documents often contain artifacts from the original scan that can impede the readability of the document for all especially those using screen readers. The resources on this page consist of a video tutorial and text instructions outlining the process of using Adobe Acrobat DC to remediate PDFs.

3a8082e126