Review: The Video-Enabled Adobe Acrobat 9
When I received my review copy of Acrobat 9 Pro, I loaded up the software and then set a macro to open scans from the ScanSnap in Acrobat 9 Pro. While it takes an extra step (I have to manually start the OCR process) the resulting file size is just barely above the size of the original. DevonThink's CEO said they're working on a way to do the same thing, but until then I'm liking Acrobat 9 Pro for OCR, especially when I found out I could apply a feature in Acrobat called "Reduce File Size" which converts the scanned images to about 33% of the original file size. The resulting PDF is a bit blurry, as it doesn't seem to handle fine text quite as well, so I recommend doing the OCR prior to reducing the file size.
Ads for PDF
Ok, so this one is a little weird, and it goes against the grain of what most creative professionals do—or competes directly with them, which Adobe has alluded to in the past and seems to be getting more heavily into as it moves in to a Software-as-a-Service model with Photshop.com, Acrobat.com, and other services. Basically Yahoo! and Adobe have teams up to deliver ads to PDF documents, including newsletters, feature articles, journal reports, white papers, etc. Think Google Ad Sense but with pictures—and as part of your document. I'm a bit unclear on how the ads are served, and how to gauge the appropriateness of them, especially if they're word driven. If implemented right, it could be a way to make a small amount of money; if poorly, competitors might love to be part of your next Adobe Portfolio or white paper. The jury is out on this one, since it's just coming out of Adobe Labs, but hopefully it won't distract from the other benefits of Flash integration into PDF documents.
Presenter
We hear that Extended includes Adobe Presenter software that turns PowerPoint presentations into interactive multimedia that can be published as PDF files, much the same way that InDesign has the ability to output pages/slides to PDF with interactive buttons (or to Flash/SWF with page turns and additional interactivity). This doesn't work on the Mac but should be a nice feature (especially if Flash video can be included to create a "talking head" video that works with the slides).
All in all, Adobe Acrobat 9 seems like a great leap forward, with the deep integration of Flash showing us a glimpse of what we can do with two venerable formats, combined together to deliver compelling multimedia content in a standard PDF wrapper. I didn't even have time to explore the new 3D options, so pick up a copy of Acrobat 9 Professional as a point product or as part of a Creative Suite 3.3 (or CS4, when it’s available) bundle to try 3D and a host of other features. I don't think you'll be disappointed.