Two important new features are frames linking and the Typeface library. Frames linking does exactly what the name implies—it tries to intelligently link the frames based on similar type styles. It appears that the text linking is limited to single pages, as it didn’t link across spreads. The Typeface library is a repository of saved font substitutions, which can be referenced for future documents -- a big time saver when dealing with standard Windows-to-Mac fonts or Type1-to-OpenType conversions. (InDesign could use this feature!)

Other useful features include the ability to save presets of the conversion settings, and the PDF inspector, which gives general information about the PDF before conversion. The Professional version adds the option of color spaces other than RGB, converting images to CMYK-TIFF, and multiple-processor conversion. It’s well worth the extra $100 for those in the printing business.

There are a couple of features I’d like to see in the next version (in addition to even more accurate translation): Paragraph and character styles named by the typeface and type size to help identify where the styles were used; and the ability to install the plug-in in different versions of InDesign on the same computer (currently, the plug-in removes any previous install, even of the same version).

While the PDF2ID plug-in works well overall, don’t expect seamless translations—even for simple PDFs. A great deal depends on how the PDF was created. This version did a better job converting graphics, but still had trouble with basic two-column text threads. If you need to convert a number of PDFs, this plug-in can save a lot of re-creation time.

Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10

This review is brought to your courtesy of Layers Magazine.