A quick guide to making PDFs

So while I was making the PDF for Seikoku no Ryuu Kishi volume 6 today, I thought I’d share my process of doing things since it’s evolved quite a bit since I first started, and I feel like it’s a pretty solid process now.

Requirements

• Microsoft Word 2010 (cannot guarantee perfect functionality with other versions)
• Adobe Acrobat X (again, cannot guarantee perfect functionality with other versions)
• [Optional] Photo editing tool such as Adobe Photoshop. Any version will do.

Files

• MS Word template document
• Adobe PDF sample document

Process

1. Copy and paste all of the text into the provided template. Update title, footer and last page information.
2. Fix formatting and styling. Ensure references are formatted correctly.
3. Remove any hyperlinks with [CTRL + A] to select all text, and then [CTRL + SHIFT + F9] to remove.
4. Check that all chapter titles are set correctly. You can see this by pressing [CTRL + F] to bring up the search sidebar, and then click on the first tab to see the document outline.
5. Set furigana readings if necessary using the Phonetics Guide tool and instructions given in the template.
6. Leave blank pages for illustrations.
7. Convert to PDF via MS Word ribbon, or open Adobe Acrobat and choose “Create” from the toolbar, and then select the MS Word file.
8. Ensure chapter bookmarks are correct. Fix them if necessary.
9. Resize illustrations (to scale) so that their widths are equivalent to the template. This should be 21cm or 8.27in. I find that Photoshop is the best tool for this because it does a good job of preserving image quality.
10. Insert illustrations where you left a blank page, and then delete those blank pages.
11. Select and right-click on each reference to “Create Link”, and then navigate to the corresponding note and click “Set Link”. See my video demonstration here. This needs to be done for both directions so that users can move back and forth.
12. Go to File > Properties to fill out any details necessary. I like to put down the original author and illustrator.

That’s it! Save and you’re done…it probably took a lot longer than you might have expected, especially if there are a lot of references or illustrations. If you find that the file size is excessively large, you can try compressing the PDF by going to File > Save as… > Reduced size PDF. Anyway, hope that helps for anyone looking to make a few PDFs. If you’re an experienced PDF maker, feel free to share your thoughts.