About Michael Jahn Expertise Any and all questions related to creating and modifying PDF files for use in prepress and printing environments.
Experience After being a director of a prepress company, I was involved in development and was product manager to several prepress products related to PDF creation, production and submission to high end printing environments.
Organizations PODi, IPA, Acrobat Users Group, (and was technical director of SGAUA - the Scitex Graphic Arts User Association - what we used to call the Floor Top Publishing systems back in the 80's!
Education/Credentials BS in Biomedical communications, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign
Awards and Honors AGFA's PDF Evangelist - was honored to receive, of behalf of AGFA, an award for shipping the 1st PostScript 3 RIP (AGFA Taipan) from Adobe
Past/Present Clients I have been a consultant to many developers. SGAUA (Scitex), 4-Sight, AGFA, Enfocus, Pantone, and currently, ELAN GMK
Expert: Michael Jahn Date: 3/28/2007 Subject: Any Free PDF-writers?
Question Michael, do you know any place I can get free software that will convert my electronic documents (Microsoft Word or PowerPoint) into PDF files?
I use the free version of Adobe Acrobat reader. But I would love to be able to create my own PDF files.
What is the best/cheapest way to go about this??
-Jim
Answer As I am in the high end prepress and printing market, where users are exchanging PDF files to be used in high quality printing, using the Professional version of Adobe Acrobat Distiller is highly recommended. However, if you are simply trying to do your Christmas newsletter in Microsoft Word, and convert it to PDF so all the people in your email list can read the newsletter, then yes, there are both free convertors to download and on-line services that will do the conversion and send it to you for free.
http://createpdf.adobe.com/ - Adobe offers to convert 5 files for free - of course, after that, there they want their pound of flesh !
Our company offers tools for user who scan books then want 'ready to print' PDF files, and our 'basic' applications start at 4,000.00 and move up to 25,000.00 !
Michael Jahn
mjahn@elan-gmk.com
Simi Valley, CA
USA
