PDF Conversion Services for Litigation & Lawyers

The following are definitions and a glossary related to Adobe Acrobat and PDF file and conversion services in connection with litigation and lawyers. Defined terms are grouped by related concepts.  Please see below for a particular definition.  Pages of other legal definitions associated with related concepts are listed on the left.

 

Adobe Acrobat. The leading program for creating and viewing PDF files.  Acrobat is available in several versions, including Acrobat, a free viewer and Acrobat Professional, the paid version that allow the user to create PDF files or perform PDF file conversions.  Acrobat Professionals also allows one to use numerous process third-party add-ons with additional functionality.

De-skewing. The process in which a computer detects text pages that are not vertically oriented and corrects in the resulting image file.

Grayscale. An image type that uses black, white, and shades of gray to represent an image. Generally, the greater the number of shades of grey, the better the image will look, and the larger the file will be.

File Conversion. Changing data or a file from one format to another. For example, Native files may be converted from their original source format (e.g., Word, Excel), to an image based format like PDF or TIFF.

File Format. A page is scan can be stored in a number of file types, including TIFF, JPEG, PDF and others. The best type depends on the desired use, whether compression is need, depth of color, and and the software that will be used to view it.

OCR or 'Optical Character Recognition'. Scanned images (from documents) that are converted electronically into readable text. The output may be a text files (flat ASCII files), or it may be embedded in a more complex file, such as a searchable PDF.

PDF. Developed by Adobe Systems, Inc., 'PDF' stands for 'portable document format'. PDF is the de facto standard for the exchange of electronic documents. PDF preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of how the original document was created. PDF files can be shared, viewed, and printed with Acrobat, a viewer application available free from Adobe Systems. Documents can be converted to PDF using software products created by Adobe and others.

PDF/A. The International Standards Organization (ISO) specification of PDF for the long-term preservation of archived documents.

PDF Conversions. The process of taking files in another file format and converting them to PDF.

Scan Resolution. A scan setting referring to the number of dots per inch (dpi) that are stored. The greater the dpi, the greater the amount of captured detail on the scan. The greater the resolution, the bigger the resulting file. Common scan resolutions are 72 dpi for on-screen images and 150-300 dpi for images may be printed.

Searchable PDF.  A PDF file that has either been created from an existing electronic document (Word, Excel, etc) containing text, or a scanned or image based file that has had the document image or bitmap converted to readable text by OCR.  In either case, the document retains the formatting and look of the original, but can be texted searched within Acrobat or in third party search tools.

TIFF. TIFF (“Tagged Image File Format”) is an electronic copy of a paper document in the form of an image, and as such contains no embedded text, fonts, images, or graphics (cf. PDF format). TIFFs are also compatible with a wide range of hardware and software platforms, and future development is not tied to any single company. TIFFs do not retain metadata from a source electronic document.