Integrating Photoshop CS5 and Acrobat X Suite

Integrating Photoshop CS5 and Acrobat X Suite

Donna Baker – March 24, 2011

In this video, we'll look at some of the ways you can use the Photoshop CS5 component of the Acrobat X suite with your other business applications.

You'll be amazed how easy it is with Photoshop CS5.

I've done image editing for many years, and I thought I was pretty good.

Now I'm spectacular, and you will be too!

First, you need to specify a preference in Acrobat.

Choose Edit > Preferences to open the dialog box.

Click the TouchUp category.

Now click Choose Image Editor and locate the photoshop.exe file.

Click OK, and we've attached Photoshop directly to Acrobat's editing tools.

We'll start with a look at round-trip editing—where you open an image in Photoshop directly from an Acrobat document file.

There are a few common image fixups you can easily do using Photoshop from Acrobat X.

Let's check out some simple changes you can make yourself in a just a few seconds—no waiting for a graphic designer!

In this first example, the image was flipped at some time, and the cyclist should be pointing the other way!

That's an easy fix.

Right-click the image with the Edit Object tool, and click Edit Image.

When the file opens in Photoshop, a dialog box opens explaining that any layers you add will be flattened.

I'll show an example of how to do that later.

For now, click OK to close it.

Click Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Horizontally.

Now that he's going the right direction, click to close and save the image.

Here's another one.

Everything on this page is one image—text and all.

It looks like we've lost the sponsorship for this conference perk, so we better remove the label from the page.

It's another Photoshop easy fix.

Select the image on the page and open it in Photoshop.

I'll use the Healing Brush tool.

Click to select it in the Toolbox.

I'll zoom into the area where we need to make the change.

Press ALT and click to identify the area on the page that Photoshop will copy to remove, or heal the page.

Then click and drag over the text.

Do you see how the label is removed?

Save and close the image, and the change is done.

In the next example, I think the clock is too distracting.

It's a lot of work to remove it—or is it?

Select the image, and open it in Photoshop.

There are a few tools that would do the job, but I'll use the Patch tool.

Click the tool to select it, then drag around part of the image to remove.

Click to close the selection.

Then watch as I drag the shape—do you see how the selected part of the clock fills with whatever shows under the selection?

That's the magic of Content-Aware technology.

Watch as I do it some more.

The Content-Aware technology compares nearby image content to fill the selection, and preserves details like shadows and object edges.

Once you're finished, click to close and save the image.

Now back in Acrobat, check out the change!

Remember the Photoshop information dialog box that told me that any layers would be flattened?

In this example, I'll show you how that works.

My reviewer attached a note to say the cover image should be 'edgier'.

Well, there's lots of different ways to do that in Photoshop, but I'll just add a filter, or effect.

First, make a copy of the layer in Photoshop.

Then choose Filter > Sketch > Notepaper.

In the Filter dialog box, you see how the image changes to a sketch.

Click OK.

I want the image layers to blend, so I'll decrease the opacity of the new layer.

Now the image looks edgier, don't you think?

Click the X to save and close the image—Photoshop automatically flattens the layers.

When you save the file, you also save the modified images, and can use them in other programs like Word or Powerpoint.

Here's a common situation: you have to put together a Powerpoint presentation, but you don't have the source images.

What you DO have, is a PDF file with the images you need.

There are two ways you can reuse the images.

If you want to use an image and its text, like this page, [using the mayor's message page], choose File > Save As > Image and pick an option from the submenu.

I'll pick PNG.

In the dialog box, name and save the file.

You can also click the Settings button to specify features for the exported images.

Click Save.

In my Powerpoint presentation, all I have to do is select the image of the PDF page, and paste it into a slide.

But what if I want to use only the images?

No problem.

Click Tools to open the panels.

You may need to click the drop-down menu and choose Document Processing to add the tools.

Click Export All Images.

In the dialog box, pick an image format, and choose its settings if you like.

Then export and save the files.

Once I'm back in Powerpoint, I just pick my edited image, and add it to my slide.

One very common task we often face in bringing projects together is scanning printed documents.

The scan process in Acrobat X produces great results.

I captured the content from this scanned page.

You'll see it contains selectable text, and two images.

I can easily open the upper image in Photoshop and make changes, but the bottom image is a different story.

Do you see how the text neatly wraps around the image?

Suppose I want to flip the image in Photoshop.

I can open the image without any problem.

But you'll see areas of the shape masked out, which is what makes the text wrap.

If I try to flip the image, look what happens.

For an image like this one, I'd need to go back to the source file, make the layout and image changes there, and then create the PDF file again.