How to Print to PDF

What is PDF?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and was developed by Adobe as a way to produce an electronic version of a document which can be viewed on screen and print reliably. Readers for viewing PDF files on screen are freely available from Adobe in the form of Acrobat Reader and are commonly part of the software bundle included with a new computer.

PDF is an open document format and other options exist for viewing and producing PDF files, some provide similar functionality as the offerings from Adobe, others provide specialized capabilities for particular applications..

PDF is derived from Postscript, the printer language which spawned the desktop publishing industry by allowing printer output to be described without worrying about the physical printer which would be used for final output. Postscript is a complete programming language.

Why PDF?

PDF works so well to insure that printer output will be as expected it has become a key component of electronic pre-press, typically vastly reducing and often completely eliminating the need for physical printed output for proofing. As of this writing (April 2005) PDF is supported natively by some printers and most high-end typesetters.

PDF is a subset of postscript carefully designed to be able to specify items on a page without being a complete programming language. This is an intentional and very careful design consideration to make it impossible for PDF to carry viruses. This is a critical feature for print shops which could ill afford to have their printers infected with malicious code. You can have similar confidence when opening a PDF file or sending one to someone else.

When you print to PDF, you will get a file which can be counted on to print properly and which can be viewed on screen before printing to paper. For long documents printing to a file will typically be much quicker than printing to paper. Errors large and small can be discovered on screen before committing to paper. Printing to paper may be completely unnecessary in some situations. It is a great way to archive On-Line purchase receipts, tax forms from tax preparation software, reports, almost anything where formatting is important or later editing is to be discouraged.

How do I make a PDF (Mac)?

Mac OS X includes the capability to save as PDF in every print dialog:

• When you go to print, there is a button inviting you to Save As PDF...
• When you choose Preview... a PDF is created for you to view which you can then Save As... with a file name of your choice.

Elegant, eh?

How do I make a PDF (Windows)?

The simplest way to make a PDF is to use a PDF printer driver. You then print as usual, choosing the PDF printer driver, but instead of your output appearing on paper on a physical printer, it is saved to a file which can be viewed on screen or printed to paper after making sure it appears as you intend.

Adobe Acrobat Professional (Commercial)

Windows computers in public labs may have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed. Among the included features of Acrobat Professional is a printer driver. When you go to print, you can select a printer and one of the choices will be the Acrobat PDF Writer.

Acrobat Professional is a commercial product from Adobe Systems, Inc. and includes vastly more capabilities than just printing to PDF.

The Adobe PDF Writer printer driver, or similar functionality, is also often bundled with other products including software for image manipulation, desktop publishing, or the software included with some scanners.

PDFCreator (Free/Libre/Open Source)

If you are running Windows and do not have Acrobat Professional, there is Free/Libre/Open Source software available which will install a PDF printer driver. One of the nicest implementations for Windows is PDFCreator. This software contains no adware or spyware. You are probably already familiar with Free/Libre/Open Source Software in the form of FireFox. An excellent introductory collection for Windows users, including FireFox and OpenOffice is TheOpenCD. Mozilla Thunderbird and GNU/Linux are other examples of Free/Libre/Open Source Software with which you may already be familiar.

• To Install PDFCreator:
  1. Download and install the Free/Open Source
• PDFCreator-0_9_3_GPLGhostscript.exe: PDFCreator 0.9.3 Installer
  1. Once you have run the installer, you will need to restart your computer.
  2. You will then find the PDFCreator printer available to which you can print.
  3. When you go to print, you will be prompted for optional information about various aspects of the document, then a file name.
  4. You can set PDFCreator to name PDF files automatically, put them in a particular folder and various other options from within the PDFCreator Print Monitor.

Geeky details about PDFCreator:

• PDFCreator is available from:
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
• Documentation can be found at:
  • http://sourceforge.net/docman/?group_id=57796
• Source code to the above distribution can be found at:
  • PDFCreator-0_9_3_Source.zip: Source Code for PDFCreator 0.9.3

As of this writing (March 2007) here are details for the download:

• Go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
• Scroll down the page for the latest file releases. You will want to click on the Download link associated with PDFCreator. You will be presented with links to several files:
• The installer you want is PDFCreator-X_X_X_GPLGhostscript.exe