Quite A Box Of Tricks

Quite A Box Of Tricks is a plug-in for Adobe’s Acrobat from Quite Software, for Macintosh (including Mac OS X) and Windows. It is compatible with Acrobat versions 7 through to 11 ("XI").

Extremely easy to use, the features include conversion to CMYK or greyscale, shrinking images to reduce PDF file size, thickening "hairlines", transformations, integrating form fields with documents, all text to black, and detailed info on text and images. In Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and on the Macintosh, ICC profiles can be used for CMYK conversion.

Features

Quite A Box Of Tricks is a plug-in for Adobe’s Acrobat from Quite Software.

The aim of Quite A Box Of Tricks is to make easy commonly needed PDF functions that were difficult, time consuming, expensive, or just impossible. The functions come under five heading: shrink, colour, transform, fields, and info. The plug-in is extremely easy to use, but also comes with a 48 page online guide to give extra insight into PDF and get the most out of the plug-in.

Shrink

• Subsample and/or recompress images without any need to redistill.
• Can produce dramatic space savings.
• Ideal for web page preparation, proofing, or fixing bad distiller settings.
• Offers "JPEG extra", stronger compression than Distiller will allow.
• Easy access to compression settings through named profiles.
• See the results immediately - if you compress too much just hit Restore and try again with different settings.

Colour

• Convert any PDF file to CMYK by converting all RGB and Lab data to CMYK.
• Optionally convert all spot plates to process (CMYK).
• Use ICC profiles for precise, accurate colour conversion. for precise, accurate colour conversion.
• Convert to greyscale, or all text to black.

Transform

• Choose a minimum line thickness to make "hairlines" print on high res devices - fix an entire file at once.
• Scale pages.
• Free rotate by any angle.
• Mirror pages e.g. for film or for fabric transfers.

Fields

• Combine form fields into document so they cannot be modified or lost.
• Remove all form fields to shrink files.
• Make annotations a part of the document, or remove them all.

Info

• Get information on text and images in a PDF file.
• For text, shows the exact font used, and whether it is embedded and/or subsetted.
• For images, shows exact dimensions, how well it compressed, JPEG method, DPI, and more.
• Search document for the largest images or for RGB image to identify troublespots.
• Shrink or recompress individual images.
• Identify not only the JPEG method but the version of Distiller used to compress.

Automation

Starting with release 1.2b, Quite A Box Of Tricks can be automated using the third party plug-in pdfBatchProcess Pro, sold by callas software as part of pdfToolbox.

Starting with release 1.5, Quite A Box Of Tricks can work with the new "Batch Sequences" feature of Acrobat 5, without additional software (provided you have Acrobat 5, or 6/7 Professional, not 6/7 Standard). For details see the on-line guide. Note: in Acrobat X (10.0) and XI (11.0) Batch Sequences are called Actions