Adobe Acrobat 8: A Significant Upgrade

The latest version of Adobe's popular PDF editing software, Acrobat 8, has been released with a range of new features that make it more powerful and user-friendly than ever before.

Priced at £900 for a standalone copy or £130 as an upgrade, Acrobat 8 Professional is quite expensive considering that users will still need to purchase Creative Suite 3 in about six months. However, those who invest in the software will be rewarded with a wealth of new features and improvements.

One of the most significant changes is the addition of DreamWeaver web authoring programme to the Creative Suite 2.3 Premium package. This means that users can now create and edit PDFs alongside their other design and development tasks.

Acrobat 8 can also convert existing image files, such as TIFFs or JPEGs, by writing a PDF 'wrapper' around them. Additionally, there are two programmes supplied: Distiller, which creates PDFs through the print menu, and Acrobat itself, which can edit or merge existing PDFs to add security, bookmarks, interactivity, scripts, video and other features.

The software is available in Standard and Professional editions for both Windows and Mac OS X (Universal Binary for new Intel Macs and old PowerPCs). One of the most interesting developments is the use of JDF to transfer job options, pre-flight checks and fix settings to other users.

For printers and designers, there are some significant improvements. The expanded pre-flight module can now automatically fix some errors as they are found, making it easier to produce high-quality output. Adobe claims that Acrobat 8 has '71 pages of new features', but the company's emphasis is on a revised user interface, start-up screen wizards for beginners, new multiple file mergers and an improved collaborative viewing and approvals process.

Overall, Acrobat 8 looks set to be a significant upgrade for users of previous versions of the software. With its expanded feature set and improved usability, it's well worth considering for anyone who needs to work with PDFs on a regular basis.