Adobe Systems has announced that Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software will be integrated into Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional enhances Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 and its support for Adobe PDF workflows with advanced tools for creating, collaborating, and controlling the output of high-quality Adobe PDF files.

Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium also bundles Dreamweaver 8, the Web design and development tool. Dreamweaver 8 supports best practices and broader Web workflows for efficiently designing, developing and maintaining standards-based Web sites and applications. Future versions of Adobe Creative Suite will integrate Dreamweaver as a replacement for Adobe GoLive. Adobe will continue to develop GoLive as a standalone product.

“Acrobat 8 Professional enables printers to achieve better quality while automating workflows and controlling costs, and together with the recently released Adobe PDF Print Engine delivers the first end-to-end native PDF workflow,” Steve Lambley, Country Manager, Adobe Australia and New Zealand says. “In addition, we decided it was the right time to deliver Dreamweaver with Creative Suite 2.3, so customers can make the transition to the industry’s leading Web design and development tool.”

More powerful PDF workflows

Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium integrates Acrobat 8 Professional to enable creative and print professionals to efficiently create, collaborate with, and automate output of Adobe PDF files. In addition to supporting industry-standard PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files, Acrobat 8 Professional now outputs PDF/X-4 for native transparency support, as well as PDF/A for long-term archiving.

Creative workgroups can now easily set up shared reviews so participants can see and respond to each other's comments as they review. Users of Adobe Reader 8 can participate in new shared reviews when enabled by Acrobat 8, as well as email- and Web-based reviews, digitally sign documents, and submit completed forms. Acrobat 8 Professional also introduces the Start Meeting feature with built-in access to Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze), a Web-hosted subscription service that supports real-time online collaboration for geographically dispersed creative teams and their clients (available in the U.S. only at ship).

With Creative Suite 2.3, printers can automatically fix problems identified during pre-flight review in PDF, including hairlines, colour space, transparency flattening, font embedding, and image resolution. Enhanced support for automated JDF workflows enables printers to automatically output and validate PDF files from Adobe InDesign CS2 software. Tighter integration with Creative Suite 2.3, including the ability to synchronize colour settings between Acrobat and other components, support for transparency flattener presets, a shared print engine, and further enhance PDF-based workflows.