What software to create files to be saved as PDFs?

[Nikki_Polani@adobeforums.com]

Anita,
InDesign would be a better solution than Photoshop if you want to have the flexibility of typing and editing the pages later. The PDF export features in InDesign give you a lot of options. Also you might want to be careful not to use any MT fonts (Microsoft fonts) as I think they do not allow embedding and you will want to embed your fonts in the PDFs.

[Anita_Hawkins@adobeforums.com]

Mike, Nikki-
Thanks for your input. Although, hearing from both of you that I needed yet another program (which the company has to buy, and then several of us need to learn) was disheartening. I'll have a look at the trial version of InDesign. Nikki, thanks for the tip on embedded fonts.

Offhand, is there any particular reason why I can't /shouldn't do the images in Pshop, sve them as tifs, insert them into a Word document, then use the Acrobat Word plugin to export it as PDF??

I do hope I'm not being too dreadfully simplistic here ;) Remember I'm not, nor do I want to be a full-fledged graphic designer.

Anita

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

You can use Photoshop for the images, and Word for the layout - and
many do. However, the reason to recommend a "proper" design package if
they were originally designed in XPress is that Word isn't really up
to doing sophisticated page layout.

However, if the layout is simple enough for Word to handle, it may be
suitable.

Another issue is text reflow in Word. Be sure you understand that Word
may change the layout of text slightly, so it no longer exactly fits
on lines or pages; a Word document is NOT a page layout.

Aandi Inston

[Johanz_Neuz@adobeforums.com]

Well being that Anita is running OS 9.2, I would be surprised that the currrent or last version of Indesign would even run on her machine! I agree that Indesign is the best choice, but in her case, I might use Illustrator first and Powerpoint second(for its ease in laying out text/image boxes compared to word). I believe in Illustrator 6 or 7 you could get a free pdf plug-in that would allow you to export to pdf (that seems like ages ago now!).

Photoshop would be a bad choice since it creates huge pdfs compared to other programs.

One easy solution would be just to upgrade to OS x. In both Panther and Tiger, you can save to PDF from any program.

J