Lessons

Lesson Info

Layers in Adobe Acrobat

So I'm going to show you all about layers here and you probably didn't know about all these layers in adobe application acrobat so layers right here are on the left hand panel right here and you can right click on the left hand panel for your pains and call a players here and what you call a players in almost every single pdf you will find that there are none you're right, you're like, ok, so what good are layers if there are none? Well, I don't know, but I think I'm gonna show you all right, so we're getting getting the layers here and I'm just going to show you the basics of layers and how they could work get everything out of the way here I'm gonna start off with something really simple I'm just going to go into illustrator and show you a few things with layers so let's these by name get my istock they're going to call it my fish right here so layers you can actually translate layers from other adobe applications if you create something with layers, you can have those layers come ac...

ross an acrobat and so I've got my fish right here I'm going to call up my layers panel and I may want to put some text on here no, I don't want to do it in there when I do it in here there it is. So I'm gonna put this on a new layer right here. We'll create a new layer, but it right there and there it is. So this is on my first layer. This is on my second layer. We can see that because of the different colored bounding boxes right there, very simple rendition of this, so I'm going to go on, I'm going to save this file and I'm just going to call this layers has nothing to do with it. Just, you know, I'm gonna say this as a pdf file so we can go right to a pdf like like save, and I can go ahead and preserve the illustrator editing capabilities create acrobat layers from top level layers, which means top level layers or anything that we see here. Those are all top level like there's because we could have layers within layers and illustrator, but in this case, I want to create acrobat layers. However, layers are on ly available when we're using compatibility of acrobats six or higher now, when we're saving us from illustrator it's automatically going to give us this, but we save this room in design, it doesn't, it just gives you a gray box that you can't click on until you make the compatibility six or higher, so I'm going to save the pdf and we'll close out of this file here and there is my fish layers and they open it up in acrobat and there it isthe so I'm gonna go to my layers pain right here and there it is there is my layer one there is my layer to okay great so why your layers useful? Well layers are going to make the pdf file that larger but what happens if you had very specific printing instructions here that you wanted somebody to look at or you give a pdf and there's instructions on that pdf of how to use this so you have a layer that overlays the whole thing and we could actually create a button that when they're done reading all the directions they can click this button which will then hi delayer pretty cool, huh? She gets something the instructions were built in in order to start you should read the instructions on that layer you press this button and action says hi this layer the layer goes away and you have this you're like well, this is awesome fantastic another way that we can do this and this is really fun to close this out and I'm going to go in here and I'm going to call up my fish began here but I'm not save that I just I didn't say that did I know I say to this big layered pdf so open that up an illustrator right there and there's my layered pdf time to do a third thing here. So I'm gonna put a third layer in here and this is going to be my tricky layer, so I may want to put instructions on here or I may want to do something else. So what I'm going to do is on this third layer here don't do something really funny, but take this and I'm just going to go to my third layer here and pasted on may third layer just like that the shut off my other layers. So I'm just paying attention to this layer right here, and I'm gonna do some super crazy, wacky thing to this right here. Um, what do we want to do here? I wantto use the fish eye filter with happy, funny, uh, let's use the fish filter. Yeah, the fish filter? Yeah, fish filter. We can go ahead and do wacky crazy stuff on this whole field fish filter. Ok, so that's, what I've done on my layer right there so there's my original layer there is my text and then there's my fishy layer right there. So again, I'm going to save this whole thing save it close out of this, open this back up an acrobat and this is what I see but I could go in here with my default, and I could turn this layer off. So this is my fishy layer, and I could just change the name of these. So I'm gonna call this my fishy layer. This is my type, and this is my art layer right there. I could set this. So this layer is off. Somebody opened this. They see this, everything else. But I'm going to go ahead and have this thing print when they go to print it. And so this will turn off. But that will be on and it's like, why does that happen? Well, weaken, set this and we can go ahead and apply. Certainly. Or overwrites I'm gonna goto layer properties here in a right click on the layer and I'm gonna choose properties and here's my layer properties. I can have this so the default status off. So this funky, wacky crazy fish is off when you open up the file. Great. Um, visibility when it's on and prince one visible. Ok, so I can say always prints so that somebody hits the print dialog box. It comes up and this fish that looks right on screen prints in a weird thing but also to I could use this as a watermark feature where I put something over the page I could also blank things out I could put an image in front of their to do it as well I can do a whole bunch of things this works a little bit better than the watermark feature because each page could have its own specific layer on there so it could be specific to the page so with that it's going to be off by default but it always prints, so I click that and so there's going to be off by default, so when I go to print, it will always print with this one I can set the properties and this one by right clicking and do this so the default state is always on, but it never prints, so the base artwork will never print even though you see it, this one you'll never see, but it'll print, and this just by going in and right clicking on it. So that's what I see when I open it up and this is what I get when I print and it's all with layers and it's all just setting up those layer properties I've done this before where well taken entire file and that the very end I'll put a white layer on top of everything, so when people print also do is good blank document coming out of there or if you really want to screw up people's printers just put a rich black of one hundred percent sign magenta yellow and black on there and so it like it's super saturates everything in three pages into it they're printer has no more ink in it whatsoever and it hides absolutely everything so this is another way that you can kind of do security I mean it's not secure if somebody knows about layers but you can certainly do this as a water mark something like that so it goes over the whole thing so this could be kind of fun kind of interesting but it's great I've used this when we do interactive menus for people who at restaurants I have a standard list of things we have drop down menus and prices that they can enter in if somebody has never used it before we started up with a set of instructions and with get out of instructions we say when you're done with the instructions had closed it closes that layer you can then get to everything else so it's really useful to have so these layers khun b here and you can go in just get your properties and see everything that you have you can also go in and just change the name of your layers here but you can import other things as layers I don't have to build the layers in the file initially it's always good to have that starting with the original is fine, but it could also go in and I can import something as a layer so I go under my layers that will drop down menu here the cheese grater import something as a layer aiken browse the source files to see what it is that I have and I could go in and I could grab something as a layer here and you can see that importers layer here looks very much like the background or the watermark features here and it acts kind of the same so I can go ahead and I can create a new layer or it can add to an existing layer here which will allow me to merge things together really nice feature if I create a new layer I can name this layer here or in my layers panel when I'm done I can position this wherever I want tio uptown left right control the opacity of this as well have this appear in front or behind the page as it stands and click ok so there is my coin and I can turn that on turn that off right there and that becomes another layer so simple is khun b I can do this with a modern mark and again right click on their show the properties and choose the visibility whether it's going to be locked print never prince always prince always visible never visible so I can do certain things like the white layer over everything it's never visible but always prints there's a watermark you put that on your layer never visible always prints so it doesn't disturb what it is that you say so layer properties a lot of things that you can do so this is going in and doing something and illustrator much of create layers there there if I do something like this and in design same basic method I can go in here and creating a design file place a couple files in here and grab those items take my piggy bank and I can do multiple layers again just call up my layers panel I think they're works just the same as it does an illustrator if I want my bacon and another layer I can just put that on another layer my coin on the third layer could put that in the third layer and they're all those things are stacked everything together biggy bank thinking of bacon first money second money first okay so I have multiple layers here whatever I named these layers that's what they'll come across as a swell I'm going to the file menu and choose export to export this as a pdf and I can export this is a print pdf because basically this is what it should be right now and exporters a pdf and there's create acrobat layers again compatibility is everything to do with it but she was acrobat five gnome or create acrobat layers can't get to it has got to be acrobat six or higher in order for the create acrobat layers to be functional so that's the key to that like export come up right there and sure enough there is my layers these nest them together here another nice feature and in design is it also does all your grids and guides separately so if you have something like that and you want to use this is something like technical training you certainly can where your grades and your guides can go in there and be able to be plugged right in and there's my different layers players take up space not tons of space because thes ie take up room anyway on there and under the layers drop down menu I can actually merge layers together so I could merge like the bacon and the coin together or it can flatten all the layers system I come down to one layer as well so if I merge a couple layers together up comes my emerged layer dialog box I choose what I do very archaic here and then go in and where do I want to merge them altogether too? I want to merge them together into my grids and guides layer so player two and three go together I click ok are you sure you want us to do it? Of course I can just undo it not so there it is so now I have merged those together into that layer right there so I have those layers also come in really handy wouldn't get into forms here and we're going to get into forms today but we are not going to get into this particular portion of forms but you'll see why layers are so handed tohave informs and we will use them so layers pretty awesome right here go inside earlier properties overall with us neymar layers import items as layers and apply them and we can also do layer overrides so that we can't go in and actually change these items so people can't go in and readily accessible if an override has been done I do that so that way if they know layers they can't get in there and they can't mess with layers they see them but they're all great out on overrides been applied which basically just click off the override and you could get right back in there. All right don't take some layer questions absolutely let's get some layer questions all right, ok so duke in park city asked are there layer are the layers? Pdf wide or per page for example at one white page for print doesn't overlay every page of the pdf or just the page that it was added to every page because you notice here that this is just the layers panel and this is the pages panel and when you build in any file it's always layers for the entire document we don't have layers per page so it just it just takes whatever was created there saying within voter shop with a layers we could do the same thing and he layered photoshopped file those layers are document light three and one that they ask can one use layers to add comments and annotations to a pdf? I don't know if you can actually use layers to do that kind of stuff with let me just go in and let's see if I put this in here and I wanted to comment on something and I put in here do that whether that's no it's just by the document itself has nothing to do with the layers so come into just sits there on the document he probably doesn't even pay attention to the layers so right? And so sami dawn is asking if you could just quickly go over the layers override again oh sure layer override is just a fancy way of just saying cut off accessibility to layers so if I play the layer over rights here see everything goes gray and so people go in here and it's like, oh, I can't do anything with layers okay it's just a way of kind of locking the layers I don't know why they don't call it that, but yeah, take it off un apply the layer overrides just to remind natty and everybody do I need to set a password to make it so that somebody ascend the pdf to camp evident you would have to have you on that you have to set that in the document settings there, correct? Because if you don't want this to be any file to be edited, hear what you have to do is you have to make sure that you were going in and going into your file properties here under security and if you want no, uh let's see good thing you remember the password if you want to restrict editing and printing of this document here, if I want printing, I can choose that, but I can also choose no changes allowed with that, but that is a password setting now there's other things that we can do to it like I showed you in the layers that are not password related, so if they knew layers, you could do that so I could have it so that they can't print it or they do print it and they don't get what they want I can override the layers, but they can override the layers, but again, these are things that people are not acrobat savvy you go ahead and do this years and years and years ago, I got this file that looked one way on screen and printed another way, and I could never figure it out once I figured it out it's like I want to hunt that pdf down in like terror all apart because it's like sneaky and the question from the m photography. So they have adobe nine on windows, and when I got it to be, when I got to view it on a mac, it doesn't always work that with the functionality of the pdf file created on a windows based system. Is there work around for this? Or do we just have to buy adobe ten for the mac? Well, when you say it doesn't quite translate, I'm going to guess it's the fonts that don't work, because if it is the fonts that don't work it's the way the file is written, because that's the whole point of a pdf is that is a portable document format, and so any of you that are on the pc that by this application and get these pdf handouts right here, they're gonna look exactly the same. But if I wrote them to be smallest file size, you wouldn't, because in the fonz would be pulling from your native machine because it makes it smaller if I have to embed the funds it makes it bigger so that could be one of the issues there. If it's standard or smallest file size the fonts are not embedded therefore yes, you will get a different result. You can certainly by acrobat ten for the mac but that's not going to solve your problem. Got it. You buy it anyway. All right, a question from jay you menace says, can we? We create custom links and buttons that will activate layers on the clients and without having to use the layers panel. Oh, yeah. That's what? Yeah, well, you know what we've got to have that time so we can go ahead and do that because that would be fine with it. Okay, so let's go in will open our recent file and there's a piggy bank right there. So with that we're the layers like I was saying we could go through and we could activate the certain layers. I don't need this layer right here so I could go in and actually just delete that one all together. So if I had this particular these particular files not here and I wanted the pig to think of bacon, um I could go in here to my forms and I could actually create a button well, I could go in there and edit no, but I want to do that. I want to go in and I want to create my button and I'm gonna put a button into the pig right here and there's my button and with it button, what do I want to dio? Well, I want to make the button there and the appearance of that I want to have no fill right there, and I want to go ahead and have helvetica bold right there, direction after right options for my button and label on lee, and I'm going to go through this when we go through all these forms, but what am I thinking right there? There we go and then I do the action when I press this button what's going to happen with this button so what's going to happen with his button is on mouse up, I let go of the mouse, I'm going to go through here and I'm going to show where hyde a a field or a layer here, so I want to go in and I want tio executed menu item right here with that and I want to go into my view layers here and where was it set the visibility that's what I want to do on a set? The visibility remember doing this last time and I couldn't I couldn't figure out where it wass set the visibility of something so I want to go and play a sound reading argo reset of foreign money jealousy settling or visibility here we go it is right there all the time I want to set layer visibility as an option or as an action ad that to it and the target layers will be sent to the current state there we go so I want to go in with that layer visibility here and I add that to it okay so close the file and let's see if I get out of here close form editing you know I can get two of them in there that's why ok so suddenly her visibility at that target layers states this like national he said I think you're in st ok so I want to go back to this close out of form editing here set this right here at it sudden laser their disability hip that's right okay you see that bacon disappeared so if they open up the file and they have that here's my button what am I thinking? Let me think about bacon everything about the coin here like looking the what am I thinking player gets hidden we'll show you that when we get into forms and buttons and stuff like that because there's a whole bunch of cool stuff that weaken dio but there it is that was on right there and this is what I would do like if there's air in my instructions when I'm done with the instructions say I'm done with my instructions click on that instructions go away, but I could do that so so cr lower from d c as probably creative live lover asked humble the things you learn when you're chat host so how did they layers relate to the rest of the document? The text on the other pages, et cetera and thanks yeah, well, the layers work if you're familiar with layers and any other application here like they aren't in design, I can have anything I want on layers and the way the layers panel works is that the I think it's on the lowest layer is behind everything I think it's on the top layer is above everything, so if I have images that I want to put behind, they can text in the middle other things on top acrobats is simply translates that's in there, so when I go back to acrobat here and they look at this, this layer is on top of everything else. If there were to be in front of the pig, you would just be in front of the pig, so if used to using layers and photoshopped in designer illustrator this is exactly the same it just takes it translates it that's what it is someone was using adobe reader it would still have the same functionality they wouldn't see there's that they press the button bacon goes away, right? Yeah, you may have limited access to what you see over here, but we won't be able to go through and do much of anything else because reader will like to do that so we could go ahead and we'd be able to use this little feature right here but so no editing or anything but at least would be able to see it as a slam was well attended the end user toe this's yeah so this is just a form with layers just ableto go in there and said it that way I had a couple more questions still of a few minutes before our break people are really paying attention and coming up with great questions for you jason so this one is from photo are tell if text is if text on is text on a layer searchable if so, once when the search results showed does it indicate that it's on a layer if texas on a layer is transparent how to search render the found word layers have nothing to do with the transparency has nothing to do with it a words a word in fact when we have all these pds that I was using right here that I hand out to these air actually done with layers as well um I don't have them set up his layers because I took them off the layers, but this is actually three different layers in the file here one for the background, one for the copy and then one for the other stuff like the logos, icons, things like that, so in this case the layers wouldn't make any difference. I don't have layers here, but text this text doesn't matter where it falls even if text is behind an image it's still searchable, so if you put an image over the top of it, keeping the layers, you will still get that searchable text if it wasn't a nose all merged together, obviously that text would disappear and would not be searchable so and you wouldn't know if there's layers of nor would it have any bearing on what it is that you were doing other than if you want to hide a few things or set layer visibility or show things or being able to people have interactive things with alot of those particular layers. Okay, great and the questions keep rolling in okay and this one's from pixel puppy thanks pixel puppy can you reposition a layer on a page? In other words, of everything is centered on a page and then you want to shift one of the layers to the right so the two layers are not aligned? Is this possible it is but what you'd have to do is you'd have to go into your layers and you'd have to import something as a layer and when you import something as a layer here you have your positioning to be able to go ahead and do that so this only allows me to do this after the fact because when I'm doing something like this with layers if I'm working on like my piggy bank right here um I could go under here and let me get out of my form editing here go back to content go to my object here and click on my object and move them around this way so if this were on a particular layer than I could move those things yes as well but if I wanted to physic we control what I can import as layer and then just scooch everything over fired multiple things and layer this would be a lot more tricky we showed you if we go in and we select all the content on the page like this then we go through and do that get my selection here we go at it the content and I go through I try to move stuff see how all this stuff can be selected or not selected so that can be really tricky the amount of content on there is definitely going to control that but here it is it doesn't know what layers which in this particular case but I can certainly go through here and do that and then turn that on. So I move the items on the letterman show and that jason yes, you can really quick question from duke in park city as you hide the layer. Can you also hide the clicked button? Do you place the button in the latter the leader, or can or add another action for the button, your buttons, anything that you do when you go through and do buttons here? In this particular case, I had gone through and I had only set one action here. I consent multiple actions, so in this, but I also want to do is I want to add another one, so I want to add another action. So on mouse up, I want to go ahead and show her high to field. And if I add this, I want to hide this field when I'm done so it will go ahead and hide the bacon hide to field. So I do that get out of form editing. Turn on my bacon, click on what am I thinking? Click on that bacon goes away, but it goes away.