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E
Elaine - help please
Participating Frequently
April 8, 2021
Question

Flattening a file

  • April 8, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 1456 views

Hello Adobe Support Community

 

I am trying to send a Word file to print with a company and have sent it as a PDF.

However on printing, the document has some areas that are darker in tone.

The company tell me I need to flatten the PDF with Adobe Acrobat Distiller.

I currently only have Adobe Reader version 2021.001.20145.

I believe Adobe Acrobat Distiller is now unavailable.

 

I hope you can reccommend a way in which I am able to flatten my PDF.

 

Warm wishes

Elaine

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

T
Test Screen Name
Brainiac
April 8, 2021

1. Acrobat Distiller is still available. It has always been included with paid-for Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Pro.

2. It isn't a PDF flattener, but Windows users can use the Adobe PDF printer with paid-for Acrobat to print PDF-to-PDF.

3. There are at least four ENTIRELY DIFFERENT meanings of "flatten" a PDF.

4. Printing PDF-to-PDF is considered a very bad thing by experts, so this advice is pretty suspect.

 

Who is "the company"? People in your organisation, people at a commercial print shop, people who make the printer, people who sell the printer, someone else...?

    E
    Elaine - help pleaseAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    April 13, 2021

    Hello Test Screen Name

     

    Thank you so much for your reply.

     

    It is useful to know Acrobat Distiller is still available.

    And bundled with Acrobat Pro and Acrobat Standard.

    I see that to purchase them I have to pay an annual subscription which would be fine if I was going to use it a lot but I am guessing I will probably use it for just this one need.

     

    Regarding the term 'flattening', I must admit I have never heard it before.

    I am a pretty basic user of technology and can find my way around Microsoft Word/Excel etc to meet all my needs but my use of Acrobat Reader is limited, let alone any other Acrobat tool.

     

    The company I mentioned is a commercial printing company that operate online.

     

    The Word file I wish to print has text boxes that overlap. 

    The first time the commercial printer printed the file there was no problem but there after some anomalies occured - possibly where text boxes overlapped - despite the file printing perfectly on my home printer.

     

    Taking all the above into account, I am not sure how to proceed.

    If you have any thougths, that would be most welcome.

     

    Thank you

    Elaine

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Brainiac
    April 13, 2021

    Ask the “commercial printing company” you refer to exactly what they mean by “flattening.” By itself, the term means absolutely nothing.

     

    Do they mean transparency flattening? If so, that means that the printing company's procedures are all screwed up since handling of transparency is best handled in the prepress / print production phase, not by the customer!!

     

    Do they mean converting annotations into the underlying PDF content? If so, that makes no sense since PDF files from Word don't have any annotations unless you annotated the PDF file after its creation.

     

    Do they mean converting all content to a raster image? If so, that is guaranteed to terribly reduce print quality.

     

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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