What Is Flattening?

from: 11 Things Every Newspaper Should Know About PDFs

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About this lesson

Flattening in a PDF is not the same as flattening in Photoshop. In this lesson you'll learn what it is and why it matters so you can understand why your PDFs behave the way they sometimes do.

From: 11 Things Every Newspaper Should Know About PDFs

PDFs can be a very powerful tool for people in the newspaper business. They can also cause huge problems, as newspaper veteran and Adobe Certified Instructor Russell Viers knows all too well. After years of watching colleagues and clients struggle, Russell was inspired to create this course, which takes a practical, nuts-and-bolts look at working with PDFs in a production environment. In 11 quick lessons you’ll learn how to look at a PDF and understand what’s going on, diagnose potential problems, and fix those problems. Along the way you’ll get valuable tips for preflighting, converting colors, editing PDFs in Photoshop and Illustrator, and much more.

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3 hrs 40 min

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It's a good habit to have a suspicious attitude toward PDFs. If you grow too comfortable with them, problems can sneak through and you will pay for it on press. You'll learn about a couple quick checks you can make in this chapter.

Checking Out the PDF
- The first thing you want to know about a PDF is whether the text is vector or raster. A quick zoom in and a little snooping around tells you a lot, as you'll see in this video.
  
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- A quick glance at the PDF's Properties window can tell you a lot about how the PDF was created, compatibility issues, and the font situation. It's always worth checking here to see what properties the PDF has that could possibly be a problem...or a benefit. This lesson walks you through it.
  
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The powerful Output Preview panel can help you assess possible problems at a glance. In this chapter you'll learn how to look for spot colors, CMYK blacks, overprint problems, and more.

Digging Deeper with Output Preview
- Often, text and objects you can see in the PDF onscreen disappear in print. Viewing your PDFs with Overprint Preview can quickly alert you to this type of problem, as this lesson demonstrates.
  
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- This video looks at Separations Preview, which may be one of the most powerful tools for reviewing PDFs. It shows if there are CMYK blacks, spot colors, and other problems by looking at individual ink channels.
  
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- The Ink Manager is a useful tool for repairing spot colors in your PDF and fixing other problems as well. It can help you control how the PDF is output, as you'll see in this video.
  
  The Ink Manager
  
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- CMYK blacks don't look like a problem on your monitor, but when you get to press it's obvious that they are. In this lesson you'll learn how to diagnose this problem in your PDFs before they leave your computer.
  
  Finding CMYK Blacks
  
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Acrobat isn't a fun place to repair PDFs...it's best to go back to the authoring application, fix it, and re-PDF. But when that's not an option, there are some things you can do with Acrobat's tools to meet your deadline, and you'll learn about them in this chapter.

Simple Fixes with the TouchUp Tools
- In this video you'll see what you can and can't do with the TouchUp Text tool. Some of the things you can't do can be done in Illustrator instead, so we'll look at that also.
  
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- The TouchUp Object tool makes it easy for you to open objects in Photoshop or Illustrator and make changes. This lesson shows you how it's done.
  
  The TouchUp Object Tool
  
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- Sometimes you just want to grab all the images out of a PDF and create a new ad or page from scratch. In this lesson you'll learn an easy way to do this with the Export All Images feature.
  
  Export All Images
  
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- Cropping is a pretty simple process, but there are a few details that you need to be aware of, as you'll see in this video.
  
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This chapter looks at methods for converting colors from RGB to CMYK, RGB to grayscale, and CMYK to grayscale.

Converting Colors
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Transparency isn't necessarily a problem, but it's important to understand it and know how to manage it, as you'll see in this chapter.

Managing Transparency
- If you want to quickly find out whether there is transparency in a PDF, and if so where, you'll see how in this lesson.
  
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- Flattening in a PDF is not the same as flattening in Photoshop. In this lesson you'll learn what it is and why it matters so you can understand why your PDFs behave the way they sometimes do.
  
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- If transparency is a problem in your workflow, watch this video to learn how to flatten it for proper output.
  
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Fonts have always been a source of frustration...and even though PDFs embed fonts they can still be a problem. In this chapter you'll get the lowdown on fonts and how they behave.

What's Going on with Fonts?
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- What can you do at 3 A.M. when you realize the PDF doesn't have the fonts and you're on deadline? Not much, but in this lesson you'll learn a few tricks that may just save you.
  
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Before you fly a plane, you check it over. It's the same concept with PDFs. In this chapter we'll look at Acrobat's preflighting tools, which enable you to avoid a lot of output headaches with a quick evaluation.

Preflighting PDFs
- In this lesson you'll get an overview of how preflighting works and why it matters.
  
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- Acrobat has some built-in profiles to help you get started with basic preflighting. In this video you'll learn how to use them so you can start preflighting today.
  
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- At some point, you'll find that the default profiles don't exactly fit your need - they're either too strict or not strict enough. In this lesson you'll learn how to create a custom profile that's right for you.
  
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- In this video you'll see how to use droplets to make preflighting as simple as dragging a PDF onto an icon.
  
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People tend to use Photoshop as a PDF repair tool too often. This chapter doesn't tell you never to do it, but does teach you the dangers and the reasons you should use it only in rare instances.

When to Use Photoshop as a PDF Repair Tool (and When Not To)
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- If something is totally black in a PDF, opening it in Photoshop will make the blacks CMYK...with color on all four channels. This is a real output problem that can and should be avoided...or fixed.
  
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Illustrator can be a very powerful PDF editing tool. The more you learn about Illustrator, the more tools you'll have available in your fight against bad PDFs.

Using Illustrator as a PDF Repair Tool
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In the old days, the only way to make a PDF was to print a PostScript file and then distill it. Now there are many applications that allow PDF creation directly, without Acrobat Distiller...which should you use? This chapter will help you decide.

Exporting vs. Printing & Distilling
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- To make a PDF that's right for you, it's important that you have the correct settings in Distiller. In this video you'll learn what the settings mean and how they affect PDF creation.
  
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People don't generally think of metadata when talking about PDFs...but it might be very important to you. You'll see what metadata is and why it matters in this chapter.

Have You Metadata?
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