Adobe Acrobat


Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format files.
The family comprises Acrobat Reader, Acrobat and Acrobat.com. The basic Acrobat Reader, available for several desktop and mobile platforms, is freeware; it supports viewing, printing, scaling or resizing and annotating of PDF files. Additional, "Premium", services are available on paid subscription. The commercial proprietary Acrobat, available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and mobile, can also create, edit, convert, digitally sign, encrypt, export and publish PDF files. Acrobat.com complements the family with a variety of enterprise content management and file hosting services.

Purpose

The main function of Adobe Acrobat is creating, viewing, and editing PDF documents. It can import popular document and image formats and save them as PDF. It is also possible to import a scanner's output, a website, or the contents of the Windows clipboard.
Because of the nature of the PDF, however, once a PDF document is created, its natural organization and flow cannot be meaningfully modified. In other words, Adobe Acrobat is able to modify the contents of paragraphs and images, but doing so does not repaginate the whole document to accommodate for a longer or shorter document. Acrobat can crop PDF pages, change their order, manipulate hyperlinks, digitally sign a PDF file, add comments, redact certain parts of the PDF file, and ensure its adherence to such standards as PDF/A.

History

Adobe Acrobat was launched in 1993 and had to compete with other products and proprietary formats that aimed to create digital documents:
Adobe has renamed the Acrobat products several times, in addition to merging, splitting and discontinuing them. Initially, the offered products were called Acrobat Reader, Acrobat Exchange and Acrobat Distiller. "Acrobat Exchange" soon became "Acrobat". Over time, "Acrobat Reader" became "Reader". Between versions 3 and 5, Acrobat did not have several editions. In 1999, the Acrobat.com service came to being and introduced several web services whose names started with "Acrobat", but eventually, "Acrobat.com" was downgraded from the name of the family of services, to that of one of those services.
Unlike most other Adobe products, such as members of Adobe Creative Suite family, the Acrobat products do not have icons that display two letters on a colored rectangle.

Document Cloud

In April 2015, Adobe introduced the "Document Cloud" branding to signify its adoption of the cloud storage and the software as a service model. Programs under this branding received a "DC" suffix. In addition, "Reader" was renamed back to "Acrobat Reader". Following the introduction of Document Cloud, Acrobat.com was discontinued as their features were integrated into the desktop programs and mobile apps.
The GUI had major changes with the introduction of Acrobat DC in 2015, which supports Windows 7 and later, and OS X 10.9 and later. Version numbers are now identified by the last two digits of the year of major release, and the month and year is specified; the previous version was 12, but examples of the DC Acrobat product family versions are DC June 2016, version 15.016.20045, released 2 June 2016 and DC Classic January 2016, version 15.006.30119, released 12 January 2016. From DC 2015 the Acrobat family is available in two tracks, the original track, now named Classic, and the Continuous track. Updates for the Classic track are released quarterly, and do not include new features, whereas updates for the Continuous track are issued more frequently, and implemented silently and automatically.
The last pre-DC version, Acrobat XI, was updated to 11.0.23 version on November 14, 2017, support for which had ended a month earlier on October 15, 2017. In September 2020, Adobe released a feature to make documents easier to read on phones called "Liquid Mode" using its Sensei AI.

Adobe Acrobat family products

Current services

  • Acrobat.com is the web version of Acrobat developed by Adobe to edit, create, manipulate, print and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for users with a web browser and an Adobe ID only.
  • Acrobat Distiller is a software application for converting documents from PostScript format to PDF.
  • Acrobat Pro is the professional full version of Acrobat developed by Adobe to edit, create, manipulate, print and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for Windows and macOS.
  • Acrobat Reader is the freeware version of Acrobat developed by Adobe to view, create, fill, print and format files in a PDF. It is currently available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
  • Acrobat Standard is the standard full version of Acrobat developed by Adobe to edit, create, manipulate, print and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for Windows.
  • Document Cloud is part of the Acrobat family developed by Adobe to edit, create, save online, print and format files in a PDF. It is currently available for users with a web browser and an Adobe ID only.
  • Fill & Sign is part of the Acrobat family developed by Adobe to fill, sign, and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
  • Scan is part of the Acrobat family developed by Adobe Inc. to scan, crop, and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for iOS and Android.
  • Sign is part of the Acrobat family developed by Adobe Inc. to fill, sign, and manage files in a PDF. It is currently available for iOS and Android.

    Discontinued services

  • Acrobat Approval allows users to deploy electronic forms based on a PDF.
  • Acrobat Business Tools is a discontinued component of the Acrobat family that was distributed by Adobe Systems with collaboration and document review features.
  • Acrobat Capture is a document processing utility for Windows from Adobe Systems that converts a scan of any paper document into a PDF file with selectable text through OCR technology.
  • Acrobat Distiller Server is a discontinued server-based utility that was developed by Adobe Systems to perform centralized high-volume conversion of PostScript documents to PDF formats for workgroups.
  • Acrobat eBook Reader is a PDF-based e-book reader from Adobe Systems. Features present in Acrobat eBook Reader later appeared in Digital Editions.
  • Acrobat Elements was a very basic version of the Acrobat family that was released by Adobe Systems. Its key feature advantage over the free Acrobat Reader was the ability to create reliable PDF files from Microsoft Office applications.
  • Acrobat InProduction is a pre-press tools suite for Acrobat released by Adobe in 2000 to handle color separation and pre-flighting of PDF files for printing.
  • Acrobat Messenger is a document utility for Acrobat users that was released by Adobe Systems in 2000 to convert paper documents into PDF files that can be e-mailed, faxed, or shared online.
  • Acrobat Reader Touch is a free PDF document viewer developed and released on December 11, 2012, by Adobe Systems for the Windows Touch user interface.
  • FormsCentral was a web form filling server for users with Windows, macOS, or a web browser and an Adobe ID only. It was discontinued on July 28, 2015, and replaced with Experience Manager Forms.
  • Send & Track was a service that lets you send files as links, track files you send to specific individuals, and get confirmation receipts when others view your file. It was completely discontinued as of July 11, 2018.

    Hidden helper tools

  • Acrobat Synchronizer is a tool installed along with Acrobat versions. While running in the background, it maintains the accuracy of Acrobat files imported to Acrobat.
  • RdrCEF is a tool bundled with Acrobat that runs a process that handles cloud connectivity features.

    Supported file formats

The table below contains some of the supported file formats that can be opened or accessed in Adobe Acrobat.
File formatExtension
Acrobat Data FileACRODATA
Acrobat Forms Data FormatFDF
Adobe Illustrator FileAI
Acrobat Index FilePDX
Acrobat Job Definition FileJDF
Acrobat Language Plug-inLNG
Acrobat MIME Encoded Job
Definition File		MJD
Acrobat Plug-inACROPLUGIN
Acrobat Plug-inAPI
Acrobat Security Settings FileACROBATSECURITYSETTINGS
Acrobat Sequence FileSEQU
Acrobat XFDF FileXFDF
Adobe Color Separations TableAST
Adobe Dictionary Data FileENV
Adobe Joboptions FileJOBOPTIONS
Adobe Linguistic Library Data FileLEX
Adobe MARS FileMARS
Adobe Portable Document Format
File		PDF
Adobe Profile FileAPF
Apple QuickTime MovieMOV
Design Web Format FileDWF
Drawing Exchange Format FileDXF
Encapsulated PostScript Format FileEPSF
Flash MP4 Video FileF4V
Flash Video FileFLV
Hypertext Markup LanguageHTM, HTML
iTunes Video FileM4V
Plain Text FileTXT
PostScript FilePS
PostScript Image Data FilePSID
Product Representation Compact
File		PRC
Shockwave Flash MovieSWF
Universal 3D FileU3D
XML Data PackageXDP
XML Paper Specification FileXPS