As others have said, it is a problem solver, more than anything.
Other than very irrational and unsupported demands from some printers (Luddites?) for PDF generated via distillation of PostScript, there is no good reason for graphic arts users to ever get involved with Distiller. And ironically, this refrying technique often adds more problems than it pretends to resolve (loss of ICC color management, flattening of transparency, loss of searchability, etc., etc.)!įor those of you who follow my contributions here and on Adobe User Forums should already know, Adobe most strongly recommends direct PDF creation from Adobe applications (and especially using PDF/X-4 settings for print) and that we know of no advantage to creation of PDF for such applications via distillation of PostScript.
Typically this shows ignorance in terms of simple fixups available within Acrobat Pro itself via the built-in Print Production and Preflight capabilities. We do often see postings of hacks for “fixing” PDF files by refrying PDF by printing PDF to PostScript and recreating PDF from such PostScript via Distiller. Why? Primarily to support PDF creation for the very many applications, especially non-graphic arts applications and especially on Windows, that provide no native PDF creation capability and may provide direct PostScript output (see Michael Jahn's LaTex comment above). That having been said, it is Adobe's intention to continue to distributing and supporting Acrobat Distiller as part of the Acrobat product, but certainly not enhancing it in any way. And just the other day, a legacy Adobe application, FrameMaker, began to support direct PDF creation without going through the PostScript route. Quark was very late to the game, creating PDF via conversion of PostScript “under the covers” until relatively recent versions. Corel was actually also an early adopter of direct PDF generation. That is exactly what happened relatively early on with Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Our assumption was that over time, as PDF gained popularity and as PDF eclipsed PostScript in terms of richness of the imaging model (i.e., ICC color management, transparency, etc.), applications would generate PDF directly. The PostScript route was chosen since for early PDF, PostScript was relatively easily converted to PDF (as opposed to QuickDraw for old MacOS and GDI for Windows). The original reason for the Adobe Acrobat Distiller was to provide a convenient means by which PDF files could be produced by any application that was capable of printing using standard, system PostScript drivers.