Adobe PDF Library appears on both legitimate first-generation output and downstream re-save flows — context (the other tool on the same document) is what flips the signal.
Back to all statisticsForensic verdictBased on this tool’s share of the HTPBE? corpus.
Corpus profile
Adobe PDF Library is the embedded PDF-writing engine inside Adobe Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator, and dozens of OEM applications licensed by enterprise software vendors. It is the canonical Adobe-stack producer for institutional documents — invoices, prospectuses, statements, regulatory filings.
In the HTPBE? corpus Adobe PDF Library appears predominantly on first-generation institutional output: documents whose Producer matches their Creator (e.g. InDesign + Adobe PDF Library) and whose XMP timeline shows a single CreationDate equal to ModDate. It is a low-signal producer for tampering on its own — what matters is whether a downstream re-saver shows up after it on the same file.
Role in the workflow
Every PDF carries a Creator (the application that produced the original document) and a Producer (the engine that wrote the PDF). The same tool can appear in either slot, with very different modification profiles.
Name fingerprints
Different version strings and spellings observed for Adobe PDF Library in the wild. All are merged into the same canonical profile.
Why variants matter
The same tool publishes itself under 33 different metadata strings — version bumps, locale tags, build IDs. We canonicalize them so the corpus reflects one identity, not noise.
Distributions
The PDF versions Adobe PDF Library writes when acting as Producer, and the other tools that appear in the same documents.
Most output is PDF 1.6 (54% of files where Adobe PDF Library is the Producer).
Adobe Illustrator sits upstream in 72% of cases — read this row as “what kinds of documents end up routed through Adobe PDF Library.”
Related profiles
Other tools that frequently share metadata with Adobe PDF Library in the same documents. Each card links to its own forensic profile.
Long tail
Smaller cuts of the Adobe PDF Library corpus — useful context, but treat each row as a single data point rather than a strong signal.
Of files contain JavaScript code
Of files carry at least one digital signature
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