Hi, everybody! David Dilling from Markzware.
And, today, we have an excellent customer question
with regards to our PDF2DTP plugin for InDesign,
also available for Quark, by the way.
In any event, her question was why do I need to have PDF2DTP when I can
open a PDF in Illustrator, copy and paste a page,
open InDesign, make a new document, make
a new page, and paste it into InDesign?
Well, sounds easy,
till you start realizing it's a multi-page PDF.
It's a multi-page document, and furthermore,
there's a lot of information and data that's actually lost,
or transformed into a format you'd rather not have.
Well, let me show you what I mean. And last, but not least,
Illustrator will only import one art board or one page at a time of
a multi-page PDF. So, let me show you what I mean,
and you'll see why Markzware's PDF2DTP is the way to go,
if you need to get layered and complete layout
PDF files back into your desktop publishing environment,
Adobe InDesign, in this case. Alright, let's check it out. I already knew that
PDF2DTP would be better in this case, but,
you know, you want to be sure, so I did a
little research further,
and what you see here in this thread, and the same applies in
InDesign CS6, sorry, in Illustrator CS6
(and InDesign CS6) and in the most current CC version, as well.
for a plugin in that open multi-page PDF file,
in a multi-page Illustrator file. And if
you read, there are all kinds of problems,
and basically, you know, what it comes down
to, I need the objects in the PDF pages to
be editable. If I use InDesign, then I
won't have to edit every page of the PDF
in Illustrator, separately,
page by page, like I just mentioned,
much the same in doing it in Illustrator, one by one.
Now, Illustrator is a vector drawing program. You can use it to make
various sorts of layouts. You certainly can,
but InDesign is your layout application. That's the layout application
of choice by
Adobe and by professionals alike. It's like QuarkXPress. It is a tool
that, you know, will handle your typography better,
your text and your fonts, your positioning, your
layering, everything can be, you know, better controlled
via InDesign, for a multi-page layered document.
So, let me show you what we mean. Here we
have some multi-page PDFs. I'll open them up in Preview on the Mac, here.
The same applies on Windows, of
course. And this is from the local soccer club.
And we're very proud that from our club comes a professional Dutch player,
Mike van Duinen. He plays for the
ADO Den Haag team, the Hague. In any event, I'm digressing here. Well, you
see here, we have a print PDF, registration marks,
and we have a full PDF here, with graphics,
typography, advertisements, you know, obviously, placed images,
and a relatively
nice, complex, professional layout here,
a little newspaper. With this in mind here, let's go look at
what the options are. Okay, if we
go into Adobe Illustrator and
we try to open this file, in Illustrator CS6, in this case.
I don't know why I haven't loaded Illustrator CC.
I'm just familiar with this CS6, I guess. I'll need to do that. In any event,
the same applies. If we try to open this in Illustrator,
or if we go File > Open, for clarity,
and we choose the Oliveo Presentatie
PDF, here, we just had open.
Click Open. You get this option. Select a page from the PDF to open.
Now, it doesn't matter if you do,
you know, 2 of 8, or 3 of 8. It's only going to open
one page. Go here and say open that page,
or, let's say, open this page. It's not going to open 3 to 8.
It's only going to open 3 of 8.
It's only going to open 4 of 8. It's only going to open 5 of 8.
So, it's not going to open the entire document, page by page, unfortunately.
So, if we click OK,
we get a host of warnings. PDF objects have been reinterpreted.
Now, of course, missing fonts is just a big problem in this whole process,
any way you cut it. But, in any event, what you get...
and you see the missing fonts here. What you get is, well,
wait a minute. Are they even fonts?
Look at that! You see, it's cut up the text.
So, you get various... You don't get like a whole
group of text here, like it should be.
You know, this should be a text story, a text box,
and I can go in there and make changes. Well, I can't.
You know, I can, literally,
font or group of,
group of fonts at a time. Let's
zoom in a little bit here, so you see what I'm saying.
So, you see what I'm saying? I can, I can,
I can select
case, but case is broken into two
elements, ES and CE.
So, this is just, you know, dangerous,
not even really usable. So, I mean, you could then go
copy, Select All, Copy,
open InDesign, which I have open,
CC by the way, make a new print document,
I can then
just paste the whole thing in here.
The beach ball spins and everything is placed as,
well, you can see. It's just not even,
not even usable. It's one big,
huge EPS file,
one big, huge image. So, you know, if you're talking about a simple
vector diagram... Let's get out of InDesign here.
If you're talking about a simple vector diagram with no text,
alright, sure. You could open the PDF in Illustrator, copy and paste it,
and put it in InDesign.
But using the PDF to Illustrator to InDesign method is just not
professional, or even usable, in this case.
Alright, so, now, let's get out of Illustrator,
back to InDesign. And this is where Markzware's PDF2DTP comes into play.
It's a very affordable 199 EUR per year plugin,
which, once loaded, will show up,
up top in InDesign, under the Markzware menu item,
with our other products, like Quark to InDesign [Q2ID].
And it's as simple as Convert PDF File.
You then select that PDF file we have right here, and a host of
preferences will pop up.
PDF2DTP will also extract images at resolution used.
Very handy, and you can see where it saves to
down here. I have it coming to the Desktop for
this demonstration.
I like to have Substitute Missing Fonts off,
because I prefer to find the font from the customer or whoever,
before Substituting Missing Fonts. That
can cause all kinds of strange things.
Toggling on or off preferences, for example,
Replace "Marked Content", can drastically
change a conversion for the better or
for the worst.
So, you might want to toggle some of these on or off.
For the rest, I just let it be. I click OK, and the conversion starts.
This PDF file, this professional newspaper,
a small newspaper, is converted right on over
into a fully editable, stylized, layered
InDesign file. The conversion is relatively fast. I've cut
out about, till now, about 30 seconds worth of time, but you'll see it really
chugs right along, taking a professional PDF and converting it right
into InDesign for us. I don't know where this was created from.
This PDF could come from Quark, it could come from InDesign, probably InDesign.
And, but it could come from, you know, FrameMaker, PageMaker. It doesn't really
matter. Or CorelDRAW.
Okay, now, you see we have a typical InDesign message.
You'll see we have all of our links over here,
all of our images are showing up over here.
So, we click there. We see we get, now, a CMYK image.
Everything is in the resolution and format used,
as embedded and exported in that PDF file.
Now, if we zoom in and we see, well, you know, we have full layers,
a full list of the pages.
And as, if we zoom in a little bit...
And, by the way, pink text just means the fonts,
the exact version of font, I don't have. I'd have to load those. Just a little...
It's not really a problem, in this case, for this demonstration.
So, if we go in here, we can actually see that
now, we can actually select the text
and delete or add,
etc. Alright, so you see how this works.
So, you get a fully layered
document right back into InDesign, where you can get to work on this file.
So, you see it's exactly like it was, more than less,
in the PDF. So,
the reworking is a lot less than what you just saw with that
PDF to Illustrator to InDesign. But PDF to InDesign, directly with
Markzware's PDF2DTP, is a really
much better option. Well, what I'll show you first is you get a job
folder and in that job folder, you'll get
all of the images extracted at resolution used. I mean,
look at that! Everything right in there, and you get...
See all the sponsor logos here? And you get the
InDesign file itself, fully editable,
you know, exchangeable, InDesign file. Alright?
That's been Markzware's PDF2DTP, and you see we have a range of products,
including FlightCheck, which you just saw, and our new PageZephyr Search, for
searching your InDesign files. Without opening them, you can see what's used
where within your document. Very, very handy.
If you'd like more information on Markzware's PDF2DTP,
under Products, you can cruise down to PDF2DTP and click there.
You can buy PDF2DTP, today. It's very affordable and
an extremely handy plugin to have in your toolbox of goodies.
It'll open PDFs and even native Illustrator files and convert them
right into Adobe InDesign documents.
Great for those PDFs where all you have left is that PDF file,
or if you have a corrupt InDesign file and you have a PDF of it.
It'll help you get out of that jam. We also
have a bad file fixing conversion service,
which helps, as well.
David Dilling from Markzware on
PDF to Illustrator to InDesign,
and why that's not a very good idea at all,
and the Markzware PDF2DTP, or PDF to InDesign,
is the way to go. Thank you. Wishing you a fantastic day!