Why Delilah, WHY!!?
What dark little part of their collective Dilbertian mind did Adobe pull this decision from?
For over ten—nearly fifteen—years, I’ve edited .pdfs and for various clients. Since Adobe could long ago have turned Acrobat into Illustrator, or vice versa, it seemed obvious that they had no intention of cannibalizing sales by combining the functions of the two programs—FAR, FAR, from it. But fine, it was petty, but who could blame them: Acrobat would always be hobbled—SUCK—as an editor, and Illustrator would always be not-quite-pdf-savvy. I guess everyone pretended not to notice–except for maybe the people at Enfocus who have made a killing bridging the gap. Somewhat.
What’s not to like?
Actually I started editing .pdfs in Freehand just fine, but through various “means,” Adobe finally fixed that: who needs an editor that can open multiple pages .pdfs effectively?
Nothing a few “upgrades” and a M&A couldn’t handle.
But for years, and including into the early CS years, Adobe played somewhat nice: you could edit a .pdf, but only one page at time, and of course don’t try to leap any tall design buildings in the process.
Until CS4.
With the advent of CS4, some odd things started happening: area text (or even point text) saved from a pdf is fractured RANDOMLY—fractured, broken apart, completely fried in the process. I’ve read of other problems, and assume this is just the tip of the iceberg. Adobe has made it plain by rod-to-the-knuckles Microsoftian/Faustian dictate that Thou Shalt Go Back Through ALL Our Software Titles to create your work. Don’t try to collate 25 pieces of simple line art for a client in a single pdf document, and make changes to that. Ohhhhh Noooooooo… they are forcing you to go back through the ENITRE publish process, editing your art in Illustrator, placing it in Indesign, then blasting it back out to a .pdf.
And I did notice this a couple of years back when CS4 came out, but though surely Adobe would mends their ways—or something. Not so: after fiddling with CS6 this afternoon, it looks like they’ve made up their collective mind.
And I did notice this a couple of years back when CS4 came out, but though surely Adobe would mends their ways—or something. Not so: after fiddling with CS6 this afternoon, it looks like they’ve made up their collective mind.
Thanks Adobe, you’re headed exactly where Microsoft is going.
