How to Distill

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It was created to provide a means of communicating any type of document with others regardless of their platform or media. When a document is converted to a PDF, all the fonts, formatting, colors and graphics are "locked" into place.

The instructions below assume you have made a postscript file first. See Postscript File for instructions.

Step 1: Download our joboptions file.

Right click the graphic below. In the drop box that appears, select "Save Link As". Save the file on your computer in a place where you can retrieve it later. Make sure that the file retains its complete name: "gorhamprinting.joboptions".

Step 2: Load the above joboptions file into Acrobat Distiller.

1. Open Acrobat Distiller. Click on Settings>Add Adobe PDF Settings.

2. In the "Add Adobe PDF Settings" dialog, locate the "gorhamprinting.joboptions" file, and click Open.

3. In the Acrobat Distiller dialog, make sure that "gorhamprinting.joboptions" is your default joboption file.

Step 3: Distill the File

1. If you made this file from MSWord, you will need to rename the file extension from ".prn" to ".ps".

2. In Distiller, go to File>Open. In the "Acrobat Distiller-Open Postscript FIle" dialog, Locate the postscript file (".ps" file). Click Open.

3. Distiller will distill the file. When distiller is finished you may view the PDF in Adobe Acrobat.4. That's it, your PDF is made. We recommend checking it carefully before sending it our way. Check to make sure you have all pages included in your text file, and double-check our layout specs at this point as well.

Step 4: Give us the PDF

You can use one of three methods to give us your PDF:

Upload from our FTP page. (up to 75 MB)

Email the file to us as an attachment. (7 MB maximum)

Put the file on CD and mail.

Things to check before making a PDF File:

Page Size: The page size must be the final trim size of the book. For example: if your finished book is 5½x8½, the paper size must be setup as 5½x8½.

Photos and Images: We recommend that photos be 300 dpi. See Scanning Details in the Guidelines section of our website for further details.

Single File: The whole book must be one single file. If your chapters and intro pages are all separate files you must combine them together, either in MSPublisher or in Acrobat after you make PDFs of every file.

Page Count: The final page count of the whole book must be in multiples of 16 for offset printing, and multiples of two for digital printing; call us if you have questions as to which printing method your book will use.

Gorham Printing
3718 Mahoney Drive, Centralia, WA 98531
Phone: 1-800-837-0970, (360) 623-1323, Fax: (360) 623-1325
E-mail: info@gorhamprinting.com