I designed a brochure with two black-plate text layers, one in English and another in Spanish, so that each language could be output from the same document by turning on and off Layer visibility in the Layers palette. After finishing the layout, I found out my client had to change vendors and another printer was going to handle the job. This new printer wanted the brochure supplied as an Acrobat. Is it possible to Export a layout to a multiple Layer Acrobat? The “Create Acrobat Layers” in the General section of the Export Adobe PDF dialog always seems to be grayed out.
No problem! If you change the Compatibility of the PDF to Acrobat 6 or higher in the General section of the Export dialog, “Create Acrobat Layers” can be selected. Layers did not exist in PDFs before Acrobat 6. When you open the Acrobat, there will be a Layers tab with all your InDesign layers listed.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
