Adobe PDF Technology Center

The PDF specification was first published when Adobe® Acrobat® was introduced in 1993. Since then, updated versions of the PDF Reference have been made available from Adobe via the Web. A significant number of developers and systems integrators offer customized enhancements and extensions to Adobe's core family of products. Adobe publishes the PDF specification to foster the creation of an ecosystem around the PDF format. The PDF Reference provides a description of the Portable Document Format and is intended for application developers wishing to develop applications that create PDF files directly, as well as read or modify PDF document content.

PDF Reference, Sixth Edition, version 1.7

PDF Reference, Sixth Edition, version 1.7(PDF, 30.9M)

This book provides a description of the PDF file format and is intended primarily for developers of PDF producer applications that create PDF files directly. It also contains enough information to allow developers to write PDF consumer applications that read existing PDF files and interpret or modify their contents.

Errata to Sixth Edition (PDF, 69k)

(Updated Oct 2006)

Redaction Addendum (PDF, 59k)

(Sept 2006)
Provides additional information about redaction annotation types.

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PDF Reference, Fifth Edition, version 1.6

PDF Reference, Fifth Edition, version 1.6 (PDF, 8.7M)

(Nov 2004)

Errata to Fifth Edition (PDF, 28k)

(Updated Aug. 31, 2005)

Blend modes addendum (PDF, 89k)

(Jan. 23, 2006)
Provides additional information about blend modes for PDF transparency.

PDF Reference, Fourth Edition, version 1.5

PDF Reference, Fourth Edition, version 1.5 (PDF, 8.8M)

(Aug 2003)
This file has been compressed using Acrobat 6.0 compression for faster download. It requires Acrobat or Adobe Reader 6.0 software to open.

PDF Reference, Fourth Edition, version 1.5 (PDF, 13.5M)

(Aug 2003)
The same document is available in uncompressed form, readable by Acrobat 5.0 and later versions.

Errata to Fourth Edition (TXT, 6K)

(Revised Oct. 29, 2004)

PDF Reference, Third Edition, version 1.4

PDF Reference, Third Edition, version 1.4 (PDF, 8.9M)

(Nov 2001)
Published by Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-75839-3

Compressed file for quicker download (ZIP: 4.5M)

Errata to Third Edition (TXT: 13k)

(Revised Jun 2003)

Changes from Version 1.3 to 1.406/01 (PDF, 849k)

PDF Reference, Second Edition, version 1.3

PDF Reference, Second Edition, version 1.3 (PDF, 4.9M)

(Jul 3, 2000)
Published by Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-61588-6

Errata to Second Edition (TXT: 13k)

(Final revision Jan 09, 2002)

Highlight file format (PDF, 252k)

(Jul 2003)