In this lesson, you will learn how to optimize your PDF file through Adobe Acrobat for print quality. So the first thing you're going to do is you're gonna locate the PDF optimizer. Now the PDF optimizer is a tool through Adobe Acrobat that automatically sets your files to a compression setting or a lower setting to make it optimized for print quality, web page quality, mobile quality, and custom quality. So let's explore some of those settings now. So we can either search in the tools for this optimizer, or we can go through the more tools option and find the optimizer this way. At the very bottom labeled protect and standardize, you will find optimize PDF option. We will click on optimize PDF option now. When we click on optimize PDF option, you'll see that we have a few different options. For one, we can reduce file size. The next option is advanced optimization. The next option is optimize scanned pages. And then the last one is preflight. Now one thing that I want to bring to your attention before we dive into changing the settings on our PDF is to view our PDF properties as is right now. To do this, what we're going to do is we're going to right click on our PDF, click on document properties, which is the very last listed item, and you will notice an additional pop-up window comes up that lists our document properties. Now this page is helpful because it tells us this file size and the page size that our PDF is set to. Optimizing for print is a very, very important process because pertaining to your printer and your printer settings, you need to make sure that for one, you're using the right size of paper and for two, that your file size is not too large or too small. Another quality with optimizing your PDFs is the fast web view. Fast web view gives you the ability and others to view your PDF and a sample, or the first few pages of your PDF instantly opposed to it being unable to load. Fast web view is ideal for optimization of PDF prints for accessibility and for access pertaining to those that you share your PDF to. So with that being said, this page just gives us the ability to check our current state of our document and to see the size and the settings. Now this is not a very large PDF because it's only five pages. You may come across PDFs that are over 500 pages and therefore optimization will be required in order for you to send and to share and to hold your high quality PDF. So this optimized PDF option gives us the ability to compress files and to change the settings where we can still hold high quality in our PDFs while the document is accessible. So here you have it. We have our current settings as designed right here for us. Now that we kind of know that currently our fast web view is no, we need to make sure that our fast web view is a yes. So in order to do this, we're going to just go ahead and hit OK out of this box and now we're gonna go to the optimize PDF option. Now what we're going to do is we're going to click the reduced file size option, which is right here, highlighted blue. Now we can hit the dropdown menu and you can see that we can reduce multiple files or a single file. Let's go ahead and reduce this single file now. When we hit reduce the single file, an additional PDF pops up. It's really, really important when you're messing with the optimization of your PDFs, that you're always saving a copy or reduce size from the original, therefore that original is not messed with, and that you can save that original. So with that being said, let's go ahead and save this. And we're going to call this reduce. And then we're going to hit save. As you can see, it has reduced my PDF size from 149.65 MB to 148.88 MB. So it's not hugely significant, but this was already a pretty small file. So now that my file has been reduced, let's go back and check our settings one more time. Now, as you can see here, we have just reduced our file size and it is optimized. What that means is that I did not expect it to go to a super small file size. We don't want it to be too low quality. Instead, we want it to hold its quality, especially for printing purposes and for fast web view. So a current optimized document of this size for fast web view had to reduce by that much to have yes, as the fast web view. So once you have, yes as the fast web view, you can consider your document optimized. Now let's double check our print settings to make sure that our optimization is in line with our printing quality and what needs to be done for printing. So we're gonna go ahead and leave this print out this window here. And we're going to click on our advanced optimization. We're going to click on this now. When we click on our PDF optimizer, you'll notice that we have this standard setting. Standard is ideal for print. So you can just kind of keep that in mind as we go through this process here. Now, as you can see here, it will tell us our image settings. It'll tell us the gray scale. It'll tell us monochrome. And we can also look at fonts, we can look at objects, we can look at user data and we can look at the cleanup process. We can look at all these elements to make sure that our document is really optimized for our print quality and that we're in line with what needs to happen there. Later in this course, when we look at pre-flight and we look at making sure that print optimization is in line with pre-flight for our printing quality, this topic and this skill set will come in handy because we're going to take a close look at making sure that our documents are optimized for pure print quality. Now you can go ahead and click the OK button, which is located at the bottom of this pop-out window. And we can save this optimized one more time, and we're going to call this reduced one, and we're going to hit the save button. When we hit the save button, you will notice that it said that it was optimized and it has optimized our file for print quality. This is how you can use the advanced optimization for making sure that your PDF is to the print optimization quality that is necessary. Now, another method that you really need to look at too, is your printer quality. For example, when we clicked on our document and went to document properties, it gave us a size, a paper size that our current PDF is set at. Now if your printer does not support that paper size or prints at another size, you will need to change your PDF to match that optimization quality as you work to make sure that that's in line with what you need to do. In this case. 8.5 by 11 inches is fairly standardized as a printer page size. So we're okay there. We do not need to offset that in any way, but this just gives us the ability to double check our settings, to make sure that our printer settings are in line. Now, when you go to print your document, you will be prompted through a process to make sure that you want to print in color and to make sure that you want to print out a specific size, or if you want multiple pages on one page. You can do all these options if you prefer through using your printer settings when you click on this print icon which is located on the upper toolbar labeled print file. When you click on print file, you'll be prompted through a process of making sure that you're connected to your printer for one, and then making sure that your settings are aligned. Another thing that you need to check before you print your PDF is to make sure that your printer settings are in line with your PDF settings. And to do this, we're going to go back to our document properties one more time by right-clicking. Go to the bottom of the list, click on document properties and then once the pop-out window occurs, you're gonna go to custom view, advanced view. Now you're going to look at advanced view. Now why we're going to look at advanced view because this second box here, print dialog presets, this sets to our printer quality within Adobe Acrobat. So for example, if we look at page scaling, it's currently set to default, which means that whatever my printer is set at is how it's going to print. But if I click on the default menu, I have the option to change this to none from that. And then duplex mode. I've got the ability to change this to flip long edge to flip short edge. This option is ideal if you want to print on one page, it's gonna be simplex. If you want to print on multiple pages, it's gonna be on duplex. And it's going to be on flip on the long edge or flip on the short edge. For example, if you're using a brochure or have created a brochure through Adobe Acrobat, and you want to print it, you're going to need to know what page will read on the right end so that way your text is not upside down on one side. This will be essential to your printer quality and your Adobe settings as well. You're also going to want to number the amount of copies. Right now it's set to default, which means that it's gonna be set to my printer quality. When we go to click print, we have the option for how many copies we want to print for if we want it on both sides or one side. Your printer will also have additional settings, but these settings through Adobe Acrobat can ensure that your printing quality is as high as possible and fully optimized. This has been how to ensure print quality and print optimization of your PDFs through Adobe Acrobat.
