pdf file Archives - Page 6 of 12 - PDF Blog | Investintech PDF Solutions

The Truth Behind 4 Common PDF Facts

Magnifying Glass View

Photo Credit: andercismo via photopin cc

Although the PDF is now a common digital format in almost all aspects of our habits online (sharing, downloading, and emailing), there is still a lot about the PDF format that we tend to gloss over and generalize.

Whether you know it or not, a lot of general facts about the PDF format are usually taken out of context or misunderstood altogether. The PDF format is constantly improving and changing. Thus, what we know about the format has to change as well if we are to use the format effectively.

That being said, here are a few brief clarifications on the most common PDF facts we all know.

Everyone Can View And Access PDF Files

When we say that PDF files can be viewed by everyone and on every platform, what we don’t often mention is that there are exceptions. More specifically, if your file recipients have visual impairments or physical disabilities, reading and navigating your PDF content with a mouse is next to impossible for them.

PDFs that can truly be viewed by everyone—including users with disabilities, are accessible PDF documents that are tagged. A structurally tagged PDF can work with assistive devices like screen readers, allowing users to have PDFs read out loud to them. To ensure your PDF is up to par, consult the PDF/UA standard which provides an official guideline on how to generate PDFs that everyone can access.

PDF Content Can’t Be Edited Or Modified

A true fact, but there are two sides to this. First and foremost, PDFs are meant to ensure that its content stays intact. It’s a locked down format that protects against unwanted modification. But if you ever tried, then you know that you can perform some edits to a PDF to a certain extent if you have the right PDF tool or if the assigned PDF permissions allow.

Photo Credit: Nic’s events via photopin cc

For example, you can modify PDF files: extract pages, merge or split PDFs, edit PDF metadata, add bookmarks or even headers and footers. In other cases, you can add digital signatures, fill out PDF forms, add annotations, and notes. Also, if allowed, basic text copying should be done via PDF tools to prevent formatting issues. Though for legit and drastic edits or content re-purposing, you’re better off performing full PDF conversions instead. PDF content itself isn’t meant to be freely edited like a Word document, but you can take some liberties.

PDF Files Can Only Contain Text And Images

Because the format is generally known as a file format to use for professional purposes, there’s this assumption that PDFs are boring, that they can only be used for text and images. Nothing can be further from the truth.

They’re actually great containers for compelling content. In fact, though usually advised against for the sake of file sizes, multimedia PDF files are perfect for promotional material or e-brochures. They can include animations, audio, video, and even interactive elements. So next time you need something creative, you can add the PDF format to your list of tools. With a bit of creativity and the right media, you can improve your content ten- fold.

PDF Files Are Naturally Secure

Because the PDF format adds a layer of security over your content, we usually tend to think that it’s automatically impenetrable. But if you quickly publish a PDF on the web thinking your content is protected against plagiarism, think again. If indexed by Google, users can select the “View as HTML” option or click to view it in a browser with a built-in PDF viewer, like Firefox. Your content is then up for grabs.

Securing Technology

Photo Credit: Perspecsys.com via photopin cc

To prevent that from happening, always add advanced security options on content you want to share, but keep control over. Include encryption, watermarks and even PDF passwords so you can specify exactly what users can or cannot do with the file. Remember, your PDF file is only as secure as you make it.

Were you already aware of the fine print behind these major PDF facts? What are some others you’ve come across?

How To Create A Printable Valentine’s Day PDF Coupon Booklet With Sonic

It’s always tough coming up with the perfect gift for our loved ones, especially around Valentine’s Day when generic chocolate boxes and teddy bears take the spotlight. Have you found that ideal gift yet?

If not and you’re thinking of gifting something creative and genuine this year, a Valentine’s Day coupon booklet might just be the thing you’re looking for.

The idea behind this concept is to customize each coupon with actions and treats that others can “cash in” on. The more you know the person, the more meaningful your coupon gift can be. So if your significant other hates a certain chore, you can create a coupon offering to do it for them. It’s a great (free) way to give a personal gift that keeps on giving!

Valentine printable gift

Getting them into a PDF booklet is just a handy way of getting them in a format you can save and instantly print up and give out. But you may find it difficult to get the formatting just right for a printable book. An easy way to do this is by using the Create Booklet feature in Sonic.

It can create and format a booklet from regular PDF files intended for professional print and assembly, like brochures and pamphlets. And we can certainly use the feature for basic DIY booklet projects like this one.

Creating A Simple Printable PDF Booklet

You’ll first need to generate your coupons, which calls for a bit of careful thinking. To help here are a few ideas to get you going:

Offer coupons for your kids to stay up for one hour or to get some extra dessert
Spouses who are always fixing things around the house can offer to handle the next household disaster
Boyfriends can include coupons to sit in on a chick flick with their girlfriends
For friends, how about a coupon to buy the next round of drinks?

After you have your ideas, you can create your own coupons from scratch in Microsoft Office Word with text boxes and a bit of formatting. We used a Word template because of its simplicity. We customized the text, added some fine print, and saved it to our computer.

Valentine Coupon Template

Our template only offered 2 coupons per page, so we used 8 of them, customized each, and batch converted them. We then merged all the PDFs to get a single 8 page PDF with 16 coupons for this tutorial.

When you have your own file ready to go:

1) In Sonic, use the Create PDF From File command to browse, select and convert your MS Word to PDF.

2) Click on the Create Booklet option

Create PDF Booklet Sonic

3) Select your options.

i) For a basic booklet, select Landscape mode and LETTER sized paper.

Sonic Create Booklet options

ii) Under Scale, select Auto. Ensure Proportionally is selected.

iii) Leave the Margins default settings to leave room for any personalizations you’ll want to add in after it’s printed.

iv) For Binding Type, select Book. Set the Sheets per Fold setting at 4. This works for an 8 page PDF with 2 coupons per page. It combines 2 pages onto one, allowing you to bind the pages at the centre. When folded, you get single-sided coupons which are perfect for cutting out.

Valentine Sonic booklet layout

v) Crop Marks and Bleed Allowance can be left to their default values.

4) Add any other elements that are appropriate:

Add a secure PDF password to keep the PDF coupons secure and prevent any other print outs.
If there’s no set expiration date, add a watermark down the length of each page first to keep track of them.
Go back and add a cover page to the booklet. Insert a blank page you can stamp an image on or add a page from another PDF.

5) Save the PDF booklet to your computer, print it out, and bind the pages.

Here’s what ours looked like, fresh off the printer with the above settings and an added cover page. As you can see, you’ll have a lot of freedom to jazz it up in your own style:

Printed Valentine PDF Booklet

If you haven’t used the feature yet, now is a good time to get acquainted with it. So go ahead and start in on your own booklet. No doubt, you’ll have a lot of original and thoughtful coupons to generate.

Main Photo Credit: Patricia Mellin via photopin cc

4 Digitally Creative Ways To Share Your Thanksgiving Memories

Thanksgiving is coming up fast and you probably have a long to-do list to get your dinner menu just right. In addition, you probably also have to oversee other important things like the guest list, seating chart, table setting, and making sure that your guests are well accommodated, among other things. It’s no wonder that holidays are always the most stressful.

However, this holiday in particular is all about slowing things down and taking the time to appreciate the people and things around you. And no Thanksgiving is complete without being able to share it with family and friends.

Social networks and online tools have made it easy to instantly post photos online and make updates statuses on the spot. But everyone does that. A quick post here and there won’t do your precious memories—and all the hard work and preparation, justice at all.

To help put some life into your Thanksgiving posts and shares, here are four simple ideas that can make your Thanksgiving memories stand out forever.

Create A Thanksgiving PDF Album

Although the first place you’ll post your pictures up is on Facebook, consider creating a PDF album. It will offer you a lot more options, and with Able2Extract PDF Creator you can easily customize it with all of your digitized photos and mementos.

For instance, on top of converting your images to PDF, you can merge other pages to it with text that has been put into PDF format. This means you can add a list of what family members were grateful for, extra pages of family quotes or scanned files of the Thanksgiving dinner speech. You even attach files like digitized recipes you used for the dinner. Polish it off afterwards with things like bookmarks and customized headers. If you collaborate with other members, you can get a scrapbook album full of great Thanksgiving memories.

Generate A GIF Movie Of Your Snapshots

We covered GIF tools last time on our blog and as you saw, GIFs can be a fun way of getting all your photos and video together. Well, a new trend spotted on popular social network, Reddit, is all about getting full length movies into GIFs. Why not use that same creative approach and generate a mini GIF movie of your Thanksgiving celebration?

Take play-by-play family snapshots throughout the evening and after selecting the most memorable, upload them to a GIF generator. Then customize and create your GIF to showcase them in one long sequence. Depending on the images you have, you can come up with some awesome GIFs capturing the entire evening in less than a minute!

Use A Twitter Account & Hashtag

As much as everyone loves getting together for Thanksgiving, it might not always be possible. But you can still share the holiday with absentee family members on Twitter, the perfect tool for keeping them updated. For this, consider creating a dedicated account. With a long string of short updates, you’ll have an accurate time capsule of what happened specifically during your Thanksgiving event.

Furthermore, you’ll want to use a hashtag. This will allow your family members to zero in on the stream and easily start up a twitter chat. However, be sure to use hashtags that are short and unique like your family’s last name. If not, your stream could get lost among other Thanksgiving tweets. And don’t forget to be visual! Tweeting back and forth with snapshots and videos will add a personal, warm touch to your stream.

Get Creative With Thanksgiving Videos

Sometimes all you ever want to do during a holiday get together is film the special moments in a meaningful way. Even though you can always find some handy tips on shooting the perfect Vine and Instagram video, take the editing process up a notch before you post and share.

Instead of using standard filters, try mobile apps that can do something fun with your recordings. Try apps like PicPlayPost, which creates a video collage out of your movie clips (see demo example above), or Timelapseit that lets you create a time lapse video out of your movie. If you film things like the dinner prepping process, the turkey carving ceremony, or family members having fun, these apps can turn them into quick shareable videos for the entire family to enjoy.

The best part of these tips is that you can use these ideas for any holiday occasion. So get creative and make the most out of your Thanksgiving posts. Try these out and send in your posts to let us know how they turned out!

When Should Jobseekers Use A PDF Resume?

Image Credit: ABCNewsRadioOnline

Finding the perfect job is never easy. You go through the same process of scouting job openings, applying for positions, and interviewing for them.

Whether it’s to help pay for college or part of a career change, you will eventually face the age-old debate about which format to use for your resume.

Oftentimes, you may find a perfect job opening with directions on how to apply. Other times, the only instructions you get are to email your resume in. Should you send in a PDF or Word document?

To help you make an informed decision on when to use the PDF format, here are 5 things you should keep in mind.

MS Word Resumes Don’t Always Turn Out Right

With Word documents that can be opened in compatible applications, you can be sure that your resume will be opened by anyone with a word processor. However, depending on the software used on the other end, your resume can actually turn out differently than planned.

Source: @DmitriESAH

All the formatting and fonts you carefully set up in MS Word can be completely useless in Open Office, for instance. Moreover, if your resume’s appearance is important for positions like graphic design, you can’t afford to have your content compromised.

In such situations, using the PDF format will be a good option. It will faithfully preserve your formatting and layout. You want to stand out from the rest of the applicants, but not for the wrong reasons.

You Should Always Have A Backup

In this day and age there are tons of ways to get your resume online and visible. Moreover, improving a resume with media and graphics is now a growing trend. Thus, people may tell you that there isn’t any need to keep an offline copy.

Well, as a general rule of thumb, you should always have a PDF back up on hand. Should anything go wrong with your online portfolio or media based submission, employers will certainly come back and ask for a resume.

This is one instance where the PDF will be a good format to send in. It will cut down on any other additional issues the employer may have in reviewing your basic work history and resume.

Recruiters May Decide The Resume Format For You

If you decide to work with a recruiter, he or she may actually have a preference for certain file formats that make it easier to add comments to your resume during the screening process. Recruiter Donna Svei over at AdviceCareerist explains the reasoning behind this:

As a recruiter, when I read a resume, I might want to add a piece of missing information. I might see a question that your resume raises but doesn’t answer. I might want to add a comment about something I particularly like.

In other words, you may be advised against using the PDF, which prevents a recruiter from interacting with your resume. But having someone add comments to your resume you don’t know about might not sit well with you.

Thus, if you decide to switch gears and apply for jobs on your own, the PDF format will be the best way to go. It will give you control over your resume and protect it from unwanted edits

HR Hiring Workflows Can Be Automated

Big companies will often have a human resource (HR) department working for them with their own systems in place. They may be using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), which can screen, sort, and handle all the resume data being submitted. Usually these work with databases that are key-word searchable, which might not take to the PDF format too easily.

So if you’ve sent in a PDF, “[t]his means the chance of your resume being seen has been lost,” Toni Bowers of the Career Management blog pointed out in a post. “Newer applicant tracking systems are doing a much better job at reading PDF conversions, but you have no way of knowing if the company you’re applying to is using a new version.”

That being said, an MS Word document may be called for when dealing with bigger companies. Yet note that with smaller companies the situation may be different. It’s more than likely that resumes for small- to medium-sized businesses will be screened and reviewed by humans. In those cases, sending a PDF resume can be a safe bet.

LinkedIn Profiles Aren’t Enough

Joining LinkedIn is one of the first things anyone should do when job hunting. It lets you set up a profile, connect with others in the same field, and research available positions. As such, a LinkedIn profile may be the only form of a resume you have.

However, when employers are hiring for highly specific positions, you may need a more formal application submission than a link. In this case, you can convert your LinkedIn profile to a PDF resume and submit it. Having a standard PDF version of your profile is a convenient alternative to send in. Just make sure you update the PDF when you update your profile.

So if you’re torn between submitting an MS Word file or creating a PDF resume, consider the above points. Find out what HR professionals are saying, and think of who, what, and how your resume content will be used.

Bonus Resume Tips:

Keep your resume file name simple
Use numbers in your resume to showcase measureable accomplishments
Plan out your resume content carefully; be selective with the details you share
Don’t forget to include a well-written cover letter

Do you use a PDF file for sending around your resume? Share your thoughts below!

Trim Down Large PDF Files With These 5 Simple Tips

Trim Down Large PDF Files

One of the biggest pet peeves of dealing with a PDF file is the large file size. There’s nothing worse than an email stuck in your outbox because of a large PDF attachment—unless, of course, it’s a slow PDF download from the web.

How can you slim down the size of your PDF document? While this heavily depends from PDF to PDF and the type of content it contains, there are a few general PDF creation options in particular which you should pay close attention to. Some fine-tuning here and there will go a long way to shave the megabytes off of your file.

Use The “Save As” Command

This is a good place to start to cutting down the bloat. Every time you hit Save in an application, you end up with a usually bigger file size. This is because the function saves the changes and appends them to the file. The same goes for PDF files.

Saving PDF files

Instead, use the “Save As” command. By doing this, you overwrite the entire file, eliminating unused objects and accumulated changes. The result is a smaller PDF file you can manage. So go for the “Save As” option once you’ve added everything you need to your PDF.

Compress And Downsample PDF Images

Given the visual nature of digital content today, images are a big part of PDF files. However, if your PDF isn’t intended for high resolution needs, you can keep your file under control by downsampling and compressing your images. When you downsample bitmap images you basically decrease the amount of pixels in it which reduces the overall resolution and hence, the size of the PDF.

Compressing PDF Images

Downsampling options will tell your PDF program know how you want to delete those pixels. You’ll be able to choose mainly between bicubic, subsample, and average downsampling methods. Each has its own advantages, so choose wisely. As well, you can usually set the desired resolutions and decide if you want to compress your images using popular compression algorithms such as ZIP, LZW, or JPEG.

Choose The Right Colour Space

You may have heard of RGB and CMYK colour spaces before. Each one has different methods of handling colour. In general, CMYK is ideal for print purposes, while RGB caters to on screen viewing.

If your PDF is mainly going to be viewed on the web or on a computer screen, choose the RGB colour space for your PDF images. In some PDF creators, you can choose to convert CMYK images to RGB if needed. It requires less data than CMYK. And one less data channel means a smaller file size.

Subset Your Fonts

By embedding fonts, you are essentially attaching the entire character set within the PDF, which can puff up the file significantly. Try to subset the fonts instead. It will keep the PDF size to a minimum.

Embedding PDF Fonts Options

When you subset a font, you attach only the font characters that are used in the PDF. If a special character like “#” isn’t used in the file, the character won’t be included. In most cases, you can choose to automatically subset fonts if the character usage is less than a certain amount. Take advantage of this feature if you have it. Your PDF fonts are just as equally important as your images.

Remove Unnecessary Frills

Depending on who and what your PDF content is intended for, you can scale down the bloat considerably. Applications that create PDFs for specific needs, like Adobe’s Photoshop for instance, will allow you to save PDFs with advance settings such as Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities.

But if your PDFs won’t be exclusively opened in Photoshop for editing, then there’s no need to prep the file for it. Thus, before you save a PDF with all the bells and whistles, get a good idea of how your PDF will be used and you can easily reduce the size accordingly.

PDFs are supposed to be high in quality, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be reflected in the file size. You can get a manageable PDF file with just a few adjustment s. And as an added bonus, you can accomplish most of these tweaks with Sonic PDF Creator. Just go to View>Options for Creation…. and you can access them through the dialog.