SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — John Warnock, who helped invent the PDF and co-founded Adobe Systems, has died. He was 82.
Note:These steps pertain to features found in Adobe Acrobat DC, not Adobe Reader.
Run the Make Accessible Action Wizard
The Make Accessible Action Wizard in Adobe Acrobat DC will guide you through the steps of making your PDF accessible. Each step will prompt you to add accessibility information that may have been missing from your PDF. At the end of the process, Acrobat DC will run a full accessibility check of your document and will recommend further steps you can take to remediate your PDF.
Add Text to Your Document
Not all PDFs actually contain text in them. If your PDF is a text-based or a searchable PDF, you will be able to select text in the document. If you cannot select text in your document, you have an image-based PDF and must use OCR tools to recognize the text in your PDF.
Use a Document title
The document title is important so that users of assistive technology can hear the name of the document when opening the file and when switching between multiple tabs within a PDF program.
Create and verify PDF accessibility
Set the Document Language
The document language determines which speech synthesizer is used by assistive technology programs.
Add Alternate Text for Images
Any images or figures that convey important information in your document must have alternate text. Alternate text is a short description of the image that will be read out loud to assistive technology users. Keep your alternate text to 1-2 sentences long.
Add a Tag Structure
Accessible PDFs must have tags. Paragraphs must have paragraph tags, lists must have list tags, images must have image tags, tables must have table tags etc. These tags can be accessed by assistive technologies and make it possible for AT users to jump quickly to a desired section or item in the document.
When using headings tags, your tags should follow an orderly heading sequence, such as Heading 1-Heading 2-Heading 3, not Heading 1-Heading 3-Heading 2.
Recognize Form Fields, Add Tooltips to Form Fields, and Add Tags to Form Fields
If your PDF will be used as a form, make sure all of the form fields are recognized and are given an appropriate tooltip. A tooltip provides a description of the form field and is read out loud by AT users. Form fields also should have a form tag and appear in the correct order within the tags panel.
Use Table Headers
To ensure that tabular data are read logically by assistive technologies, use table header tags for column headers, row headers, or both.
Check the practicing Order
You will need to manually check that the content in your PDF follows a logical practicing order. To check the practicing order, open the tags panel and arrow down. Move items up or down in the tags panel to correct problems with the practicing order.
Check for Appropriate Color Contrast
You will need to manually check that your PDF document has sufficient color contrast. We recommend using the free Color Contrast Analyser tool, which is available for MacOS and PC. If there are contrast issues in your PDF, you will need to return to the authoring program and adjust the colors there.
NOTE:Any color contrast issues that are found will likely need be addressed in the source document (e.g., Microsoft Word). If you find color contrast issues in a PDF, and re-export the PDF, you will need to re-do all the tagging and practicing order work from the above tips.
PDF Accessibility
Here are the top tips and tricks that you can use to view, annotate, sign, and work on PDF documents in Adobe Acrobat Reader more effectively.
These are the top tips and tricks using which you can Improve the experience of working with PDF documents in free Adobe Acrobat Reader:
- Add comments with sticky notes, highlights, text boxes, etc.
- Record and add audio to PDFs.
- Use Fill & Sign tool.
- Add stamps to your PDFs.
- Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly perform tasks.
- Quickly revert to a previously saved version of your PDF.
- Customize PDF settings as per your preferences.
- Measure the distance, area, and perimeter of objects in PDF.
- Share PDFs with other users to view, comment, and sign them.
- Save your PDF as a plain text document.
Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader Tips & Tricks
1] Add comments with sticky notes and highlights
Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to perform some standard editing tasks on your PDFs. These include adding comments to the PDF, inserting sticky notes, highlighting important text, adding text boxes, etc. You can also create drawings in your PDFs and add shapes like lines, circles, arrows, rectangles, ovals, text callouts, and more. It also lets you perform some basic text formatting such as underline text, strikethrough text, etc.
To use these tools, go to the Tools tab and click on the Open button present under the Comments tool. It will then open up the related toolbar that you can use to edit or annotate your PDF.
2] Record and add audio to PDFs
You can also add audio recordings to your PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Reader. It allows you to add voice comments in PDFs. To add audio recordings to PDFs, choose the Tools > Comments > Open option and click on the Add a new attachment option. From the drop-down menu options, select the Record Audio option. Now, record audio through your microphone and then attach it to your PDF.
You can even add a pre-recorded audio file to the PDF. It supports WAV and AIFF audio formats to do that.
3] Use Fill & Sign tool
One of the most important tools in Acrobat Reader is its Fill & Sign tool. Using this tool, you can fill out PDF forms and electronically sign your PDF documents. This tool can be accessed from the Sign menu or Tools tab. It lets you draw your signatures or add initials to the PDF. You can also browse and add an image of your signature from your PC.
You can also request recipients to digitally sign and validate the PDF. To do that, you can click on the Request E-Signatures button and then enter the name or email address of the recipients to send them the request. However, in the free version of Acrobat Reader, you can send e-signature requests to a limited number of users only.
TIP: Adobe Fill and Sign not working.
4] Add stamps to your PDFs
Stamping PDF is quite a regular PDF annotation task. In Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can easily insert stamps into your PDF documents. These stamps can be Confidential, Approved, Rejected, Modified, Final version, Draft, etc. You can use these and more stamps by using the Tools tab > Stamp option.
5] Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly perform tasks
Adobe Acrobat Reader lets you use some keyboard shortcut keys to quickly perform a specific task. Some of the important Acrobat hotkeys that you must know are as follows:
- Move focus to menus: F10.
- Switch between one opened PDF to another: CTRL+TAB.
- Close the current PDF: CTRL+F4.
- Find in the document: CTRL+F.
- Activate and deactivate Read Out Loud: SHIFT+CTRL+Y.
- Read out loud text in the PDF: SHIFT+CTRL+B.
- Pause practicing out loud: SHIFT+CTRL+C.
- Open the navigation pane: SHIFT+CTRL+F5.
- Expand all bookmarks: SHIFT+*.
- Enable/disable the Read mode: CTRL+H.
- Enter/exit fullscreen: CTRL+L
You can also use single-key shortcuts to quickly access tools and enhance your workflow speed.
To do that, click on the Edit > Preferences option, and from the General tab, tick the checkbox associated with the Use single-key accelerators to access tools option. Finally, press the OK button to save changes. You can now use the following shortcut keys:
- Hand tool: H
- Select tool: V
- Marquee Zoom tool: Z
- Select Object tool: R
- Stamp tool: K
- Current highlighting tool: U
- Text Box tool: X
Read: Cannot edit PDF files on Acrobat Reader DC.
6] Quickly revert to a previously saved version of your PDF
If you want to quickly revert to a previous version of the opened PDF document and undo all changes, you can do that too. Just click on the File menu and choose the Revert option. On the prompted confirmation dialog, press the Revert button and it will undo all the changes and restore a previously saved version of the PDF.
7] Customize PDF settings as per your preferences
To work on documents, you can customize PDF settings as per your requirements. You can customize the page display preferences like page layout, resolution, rendering options, show/hide large images, use smooth zooming, use logical page numbers, show reference XObject targets, etc. Apart from that, you can also set up other preferences like multimedia, accessibility, screen reader options, search options, forms, enable spellcheck, etc.
See: Fix Adobe Reader error 109 when opening, reading, or saving PDF.
8] Measure the distance, area, and perimeter of objects in PDF
Adobe Acrobat provides a dedicated Measure tool to find out different statistics like distance, area, and perimeter of objects in your PDFs. It also lets you find the location on the map or select an area to view the respective longitude and latitude values. This tool is really helpful in analyzing a geospatial PDF document. Besides that, you can also view object data.
To use the Measure tool, go to the Tools tab and select the Open option under the Measure tool.
9] Share PDFs with other users to view, comment, and sign them
It also lets you share your PDF documents with other users who can read the PDF document as well as add comments and sign the PDF. You can go to the File menu > Share File option or click on the Tools > Share > Open option to share your PDF file with other users.
You can also add a deadline for the document by clicking on the Add Deadline button and then choosing a due date.
Read: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC not showing bookmarks in Windows PC.
10] Save your PDF as a plain text document
You can also save your PDF document as a plain text document in Adobe Acrobat. To do that, click on the File > Save as Text option and enter the filename of the document to save it.
The PDF tips and tricks about Adobe Acrobat that we shared above are applicable to the free version. If you have a Pro edition, there is a lot more you can do with PDFs using Acrobat. This includes combining files into a single PDF, converting PDFs to Excel, Word, or Powerpoint, compressing PDFs, and more.
How do I optimize a PDF in Acrobat?
To optimize or compress a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat, you can click on the File menu and choose the Compress File option. Alternatively, move to the Tools tab, scroll down to the Compress File tool, click on the Open button, choose the input PDF, and follow the prompted instructions to compress the PDF.
How can I make a PDF more interesting?
You can create a PDF more interactive and interesting by adding interactive elements to it. These elements may include PDF form elements, clickable links, buttons, multimedia items, audio comments, and more. All these options are provided in Adobe Acrobat Reader.
There are times when Acrobat Reader DC fails to open a PDF file and displays the following error message – Adobe Acrobat Reader could not open PDF because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged. It is mostly seen with users who frequently convert documents to pdf by using Microsoft print to PDF. See what you can do to fix the problem, quickly.
Earlier, Acrobat products performed no checks on the extraneous bytes present before the %PDF-header. As such, it could open a PDF file as long as the %PDF-header started within the first 1024 bytes of the file. There’s however, a change in the scheme of things now. The latest updates have improved security by enforcing stricter parsing of the PDF-header. So, PDFs that do not correctly start with the ‘%PDF-‘ header are prevented from opening and you see the error message as described above.
To remove this error and open the file normally, you can modify the way the PDF is produced, making sure that no extraneous bytes appear before %PDF at the head of the file.
Launch the Run dialog box by pressing Win+R in combination.
Type Regedit in the empty field of the box and press Enter.
When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to the following path address –
HKCU\Software\Adobe\(product name)\(version)\ AVGeneral key
If the key does not exist, create it manually.
Switch to the right-pane.
Create a new DWORD value – bValidateBytesBeforeHeader.
Set its value to 0.
Close and Exit the Registry Editor.
Related read: Adobe Reader not working in Windows 10.
Try opening your PDF file again. It should load normally. If it does not, you may use Edge or any other alternative free PDF Reader.
Hope that helps!
Gissimee Doe has been writing for over 11 years on a range of subjects and interests. Her favorite genres are horror, science fiction, adventure and food. Doe maintains a number of fashion and style blogs and is currently working on her first novel. She holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and a Master of Science in computer-based management information systems.
The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and computer scientist died Saturday surrounded by family after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, the company said.
“John’s brilliance and innovations left an indelible mark on Adobe, the technology industry and the world,” Adobe said in a statement.
Warnock worked for Xerox before he and colleague Charles Geschke created a company around a rejected idea in 1982. Nearly a decade later, Warnock outlined an early version of the Portable Document Format, or PDF, transforming the way documents are exchanged.
Originally from the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay, Warnock described himself as an average student who later flourished in mathematics.
People are also reading…
He earned an undergraduate in math and doctorate in electrical engineering, or computer science, from the University of Utah and maintained close ties with his home state after he retired as CEO of Adobe.
Warnock was the son of a prominent local attorney but was an average student until a teacher at Olympus High School took an interest in him, he told the University of Utah’s alumni magazine, Continuum, in 2013.
“I had an amazing teacher in high school who, essentially, completely turned me around,” Warnock said. “He was really good at getting you to love mathematics, and that’s when I got into it.”
He continued to be a self-described “mediocre” student as he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and philosophy, but he made a mark while working on his master’s degree.
In 1964, he solved the Jacobson radical, an abstract algebra problem that had been a mystery since it was posed eight years before. The following year he met his wife, Marva Mullins, and married her five weeks later.
After a summer spent working at a tire shop, he decided the low-paying field of academia wasn’t for him and applied to work at IBM, starting his training in computer science. He earned a doctorate at the University of Utah, where he joined a group of cutting-edge researchers working on a Department of Defense-funded precursor to the internet in the 1960s. Even then, Warnock was working on rendering images on computers.
In the late 1970s, Warnock moved to Palo Alto, California, to work for Xerox on interactive computer graphics. There, he met Geschke and went to work developing InterPress, a printing and graphics protocol that they were convinced would be the wave of the future. When Xerox balked, they decided to create their own company.
They founded Adobe in 1982 and created PostScript, a program that helped make small-scale printing feasible for the first time. The company later created the PDF, which let people create electronic versions of documents that could be preserved and sent it to other users, who could search and review them.
With that, Adobe took off, and PDF eventually replaced many paper copies in legal, business and personal communication.
Other iconic programs, such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, followed before Warnock stepped down as CEO in 2000. He and Geschke remained as co-chairs of the company’s board of directors until 2017, and Warnock remained a board member until his death.
“John has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest inventors in our generation with significant impact on how we communicate in words, images and videos,” Adobe chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen said in an email to company employees.
After his retirement, Warnock and his wife devoted more time to hobbies such as collecting rare books, many of which he’s scanned and put online at rarebookroom.org. They also collected Native American art, including moccasins, shirts, and beadwork that has toured the country in exhibitions.
Warnock is survived by his wife and their three children.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Adobe Photoshop CS5 can convert your file to a variety of file types, including a PDF, by adjusting the "Format" option in the "Save As" dialog box. Adjusting the file type to which your Photoshop project will be saved allows you to create a file that can be opened in any program with which that file type is compatible. The ability to convert Photoshop projects to the PDF format also makes it possible for viewers on other computers to see the project, even if they do not have Photoshop CS5.
-
Click "Start," click "All Programs," and then click "Adobe Photoshop CS5."
-
Click "File" at the top of the window, click "Open," and then double-click the file that you want to convert to the PDF format. If necessary, make any edits or modifications to your file.
-
Click "File" at the top of the window again, then click "Save As."
-
Click the drop-down menu to the right of "Format," click "Photoshop PDF," and then click "Save."
-
Click the "Save PDF" button at the bottom of the window.
New Adobe Acrobat PDF Engine Coming to Microsoft Edge Browser in March
Microsoft and Adobe have collaborated on "natively embedding" new Adobe Acrobat PDF technology into the Microsoft Edge browser for Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems, according to a Wednesday Microsoft announcement.
This new Adobe Acrobat PDF engine will start to appear in Edge for unmanaged Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems as early as March. It'll be replacing the current "legacy engine" that's already in the Edge browser. These unmanaged Windows users won't have an opt-out option.
Organizations overseeing managed devices won't get the new engine in March, but they can opt in to get it then, if wanted, according to Microsoft's FAQ announcement. The policy to opt into using the new engine is called "NewPDFReaderOptInEnabled."
Organizations with managed Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices will start getting their rollout of the new Adobe Acrobat PDF engine in September. They'll also have an opt-out policy option at that time. However, this September opt-out policy will just give organizations a six-month reprieve, as Microsoft intends to remove the old engine on March 31, 2024. That's also the date when the opt-out policy will expire for organizations.
The switch to the new embedded engine in Edge is being done to enhance the PDF document experience, such as adding "higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility," Microsoft's announcement indicated. The improvements and PDF practicing capabilities don't cost users. However, users with Adobe Acrobat subscriptions can also tap an Acrobat extension in Edge that lets them perform actions such as "edit text and images, convert PDFs to other file formats, and combine files," Microsoft's FAQ indicated. Users also will be able to buy access to such "advanced features" from within the Edge browser.
The new Acrobat engine will continue to provide access to the same features as were available in the legacy engine, Microsoft assured. One coming change with the new engine will be an Adobe brand icon, which will appear "in the bottom corner" of PDFs.
Microsoft and Adobe also are working to add the new Acrobat PDF engine to the Edge browser for macOS systems. However, there's not projected date, with Microsoft saying that "we will have more to share at a later date."
Adobe's landing page describing the integration offered a broader picture than just a new Acrobat engine in the Edge browser. Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Sign (an electronic signature app) are integrated across Microsoft 365 applications, Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Purview Information Protection, according to that page.
Adobe and Microsoft are long-term partners. However, it hasn't been too long since Microsoft removed the Adobe Flash video player from Windows in favor of video using HTML5, WebAssembly and WebGL technologies. Microsoft's monthly "update Tuesday" patch releases for Windows systems had often also included patches for Adobe Flash back then.
Microsoft did not describe any Edge patching details that might be associated with coming new Adobe Acrobat engine.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.
