Overprint Preview gets smart

Often, it's the little things that matter the most.

The Acrobat 9 release offers lots of great features, but in reality, there's a little preference that just may be more important than any new single feature itself.

In the past, I've posted here, here, and here about how the overprint preview mode is so important.

But as many people are quick to point out, it's one thing if you know (or remember) to turn overprint preview on. It's quite another thing to get your clients to turn overprint preview on.

And that's why Acrobat 9 is going to make our lives oh-so-much easier.

Acrobat 9 now has a preference (which is on by default), that automatically senses whether a document contains overprints in it. If the PDF DOES contain overprints, Acrobat 9 automatically turns on overprint preview, so that the document displays correctly. Yay Adobe! This feature will be available in the free Acrobat Reader application as well, so you'll just want to make sure that your client downloads the latest version of the Reader (version 9 hasn't been posted yet, but I expect we'll see it in the several days or so). Naturally, getting your client to update their reader is yet another challenge :)



I believe the default setting that Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9 will use is for PDF/X-1a files (which suffer from this problem the most), and there's also an Automatic setting that will work on any PDF document.

On a side note, this is the kind of stuff I like to see from Adobe. Applications that are smart enough to make changes as needed (where appropriate) is something I'd like to see a lot more of.

Kuler, meet Flickr. Flickr, meet Kuler.

Check out the latest update to Adobe Kuler -- which now has direct support for Flickr. You can pull color themes right out of Flickr images, and you can even access your own Flickr images from Kuler.

In addition, you'll find it a lot easier to find color themes as searches can now be limited to time. Meaning you can search for themes from the past 30 days, or week, etc.

Designers have also been somewhat peeved at Kuler's automatic way of choosing avatars -- those little icons that appear next to your name. After all, as a designer, you'd like to choose the colors that define you, no? Well, now, you can take any saved color theme in Kuler and assign it as your custom avatar. Cool!

Acrobat 9, Fireworks, and Online Services

Adobe officially announced Acrobat 9 today. I'll admit I am VERY impressed with the release (I know, it's Acrobat!), and it's worth heading over to Adobe's website to take a look.

Of interesting note is that Adobe has announced a 3.3 upgrade to Creative Suite Design Premium owners, which is basically Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium PLUS Acrobat 9... and Fireworks! For those who weren't aware, Fireworks was previously available only as part of the Web edition of the suite. This will give more people a reason to see some of the benefits of Fireworks. While I'll admit I've toyed with Fireworks here and there, I'm still firmly entrenched in sticking with Illustrator. Maybe folks out there can help me find more of a reason to use Fireworks.

Of most interest to me however, and what I believe is probably the most exciting news of the day, is Adobe's announcement that alongside Acrobat 9 are a variety of online services. I personally have been relying on several online "applications" (37 Signals' Basecamp is one such example), and most of you are familiar with Adobe's Kuler and Photoshop Express apps as well. Now, Adobe introduces several new online services at www.acrobat.com that include an online word processor (Buzzword) and a suite of tools that allow you to create, share, and host documents online.

If this is a direction that Adobe is moving towards (which appears is the case), then one can only dream of how such online services can also be extended towards the design community. Yummy thoughts.