Toronto, ON, September 28, 2010 - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher® cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator® and Geographic Imager® spatial tools for Adobe Photoshop®, is pleased to announce the official release of PDF Maps, the first and only geospatial PDF reader for Apple iOS devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

PDF Maps is the first application of its kind designed specifically for using geographically-aware PDF files on portable devices and opens the door to allowing any map to be GPS-aware. It will give users the power to interact with georeferenced PDF maps and images directly from their iOS device with viewing performance levels well above other mobile PDF viewing applications.

"We are very excited about the release of PDF Maps. Every so often a new product generates a lot of buzz in the industry and we're glad that we’ve developed a product with which publishers and users of geospatial PDF maps can now fully interact with them on their Apple iOS devices" said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. "This app complements our other products, MAPublisher and Geographic Imager, the only available methods for authoring geospatial PDF documents within Adobe Creative Suite” he added.

PDF Maps offers the following capabilities

•    Access and load maps from your own computer through iTunes File Sharing as well as over the Internet or a LAN
•    Access and interact with saved maps without the need for a live network connection
•    View your location on the PDF map using the built-in GPS device (iPhone and iPad 3G+WiFi) or via Wi-Fi triangulation
•    Use the compass to view true or magnetic north (iPhone and iPad 3G+WiFi)
•    Quickly view, zoom and pan maps using gestures (pinch, drag and flick, double tap)
•    Plot way-points, enter attribute data and notes
•    Display the location of any point (latitude and longitude)
•    Measure distances and areas
•    Supports both Adobe geospatial PDF specified maps and GeoPDF® files

Visit http://www.avenza.com/pdf-maps or for more information.

PDF Maps is available now on the iTunes App Store free of charge.

More about MAPublisher and Geographic Imager

MAPublisher for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior design capabilities of this leading graphic design software. Geographic Imager is powerful software for working with spatial imagery in Adobe Photoshop that leverages the superior image editing capabilities of this raster-based image-editing software. For more information on these products and the Avenza geospatial PDF app visit the Avenza website at www.avenza.com

More about Geospatial PDF

With the release of Adobe Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9 a new geospatial feature set was introduced to the Adobe PDF specification. Geospatial PDF files are PDF documents that contain geospatial information such as real world location and/or GIS attributes. Geospatial PDF documents can be created in some GIS applications such as ArcGIS and Mapinfo and from within Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop with the aid of the MAPublisher and Geographic Imager plugins, respectively. The geospatial data contained in a geospatial PDF document may be accessed and used (for example to locate a specific point or measure distances) without the aid of any additional plugins, using tools found natively within Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9.

More about Avenza Systems Inc.

Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps. In addition to software offerings for Mac and Windows users, Avenza offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.