Acrobat Distiller

• Make sure that Acrobat Standard or Professional is installed on your computer according to the instructions that came with the software.
• You may want to check www.adobe.com to make sure Acrobat is updated with the most recent release.
• Once installed, launch Acrobat Distiller (a separate application that is installed with Acrobat Standard and Professional.) An Acrobat Distiller window will appear. In the Default Settings pop-up menu, choose PDF/X-1a:2001 (Acrobat 7 and 8) or PDFX1a (Acrobat 6).

• You may now quit Acrobat Distiller. Since the default setting is set to the PDF/X-1a, any PDF created using the Adobe PDF Printer will adhere to the PDF/X-1a standard until the default is changed.
• Upon installation of Acrobat, a PDF printer was created called Adobe PDF 8.0 (Acrobat 8), Adobe PDF 7.0 (Acrobat 7) or Adobe PDF (Acrobat 6).
• Printing your ad to this printer will automatically generate a PDF/X-1a file from any application.

Setting Active Printer

• Make sure your active printer is set to Adobe PDF.

Print Dialog Box

• Go to the print dialog box of your graphics program and choose appropriate setting based on the Source Interlink Media's Digital Guidelines such as crop marks, crop mark offset, bleeds, etc.

Creating a PDF

• When you are ready to create a PDF/X-1a file, click Print.
• By default, the new PDF file will be named the same name as your document with a ".pdf" extension added to the end.
• Also, it should appear on your Desktop (for Macs) or in your "My Documents" folder (Windows).
• If you cannot find the newly created PDF file, try using the Find feature to search for it.
• When you are finished, make sure to compare the PDF version of the ad with the original version.