The POWER of saving as a Photoshop PDF

After much experimentation, I've found saving work as an Acrobat PDF in Photoshop, provided you use the correct options when saving, creates a file that is not only smaller than a PSD, but retains all the richness that a regular Photoshop PSD has, plus the added benefits of creating a graphic that can be viewed in Adobe Acrobat reader and embedded fonts for printing.

Photoshop PDFs retain all color modes (rgb, cmyk, LAB, etc), all Imageready data, guides, masks, channels, and every other gimmick that a PSD has.

Using the ZIP compression, saving with layers, and embedding fonts into the PDF, I've noticed not a single piece of data left out of saved documents. And sometimes, the file size savings is around 30%.

Embedding fonts won't help you if you reinstall your OS and forget to save your fonts. I tried removing a font from my fonts directory that I embedded into a photoshop PDF, but Photoshop still acted like the font wasn't there in the font embedded PDF. Acrobat itself however, doesn't have that limitation.

There IS one negative, if you can consider this a negative. You cannot view a PDF image file in an external viewer, such as ACDSee. Which may also prove to be a turn-off to this technique. But you can use the free Adobe Acrobat reader to view them (duh). Unlike using an external viewer, Acrobat will keep vector art in your PSD crisp when you zoom in on it, which can be seen as a plus.

Now I haven't switched over yet to saving exclusively as PDFs, because Im still fearful that I may be missing something crucial that may actually lose data that is in a PSD, though I haven't seen it yet. I work so much in Photoshop, that I feel that if you want to archive some work, and not wanting it to take up as much space, or have it print ready & have it totally editable even saved for a print-job, this is the way to go.

I've been recieving files for print from one client like that for about 3 months now and haven't had any kind of trouble thus far. I had not really played with it myself until he started bringing me PDF files produced in Photoshop 6.