Today we’d like to introduce the latest addition to the PDF2ID product line. Its called PDF2ID Lite and its presently only available for InDesign CC through the Adobe Exchange panel.

Over the last couple of years Adobe has added the ability to purchase InDesign plug-ins right within InDesign. So with the release of InDesign CC, Recosoft has also released PDF2ID v4.0 for InDesign CC that is directly available through this amazing system.

Lets just observe this.

So here I have InDesign CC running and I use the “Adobe exchange” command found under the Window menu. The adobe Exchange panel appears.

Now we just type PDF2ID; and voila everyone’s favorite pdf to indd converter or actually the pdf to InDesign conversion plug-in PDF2ID appears within the Exchange panel. Both Mac and Windows versions are available. Notice that it’s also priced at US$99.99! So, we’ve released a low cost edition of PDF2ID; how about that!

You can click on the version you want to purchase and it gets installed in your system right away while InDesign is running.

We already have PDF2ID lite installed of course so lets see it in action. As usual you see the “Recosoft” menu in InDesign with the command “PDF2ID – Convert PDF file…”.

Lets just select it and invoke it. Now we select a PDF file to convert and PDF2ID prefight’s the PDF file to check to see whether the fonts used in the PDF exist in the system. Lets just dismiss this tip for now.

The PDF2ID Options window appears and if you observe many of the advanced features of PDF2ID Standard and Professional aren’t available. We did this to provide a version of PDF2ID that was straightforward to use without having to worry about performing any kind of configurations so you can just concentrate on converting the file.

Now, if you remember clearly PDF2ID performed a pre-flight initially and warned about fonts not matching. Lets perform the required font substitution in InDesign and proceed to convert the file.

We click and choose Font substitution and we get a list of fonts on the left that are in the PDF that weren’t mapped automatically by PDF2ID. So for each font we perform a mapping by clicking on the Unmapped font on the left hand side and clicking on the Font to substitute with on the right-hand side.

Lets just do this for all of the unmapped fonts to achieve the best conversion. So here we’re doing it 1 by 1; it should just take a few seconds.

Now we’re done; wasn’t quick and easy?

Lets click OK to convert the file and observe the converted result against the original PDF file (notice that the conversion of a 15 page PDF file is extremely fast in PDF2ID v4.0 as it’s a native 64-bit technology).

Lets compare the original PDF file against the converted output. You notice that the layout has been preserved extremely well with paragraphs being formed and frames being linked. You further notice that images and vector graphics are native InDesign elements also. Lets scroll down a few more pages and observe the formatting some more.

Again, you notice that the layout is well preserved and all of the text is live and editable. Furthermore you can appreciate the detail with which PDF2ID re-created InDesign properties such as a clipping path being applied to this image here and the vector graphics as fully editable InDesign objects.

Checking the links panel in InDesign we see that images were linked and resolution was maintained.

So, we’ve now delivered a low-cost edition of PDF2ID v4.0 that works with InDesign CC available directly within the Adobe Exchange panel which keeps on getting enhanced with every version of InDesign.