How to use printer options to create PDF documents ?

This is a short guide on how to create a PDF file of any document or image via the printer options on your application, the file being readable by the adobe PDF software.

Setting up

Printing is commonly associated printing a hard copy of a document or image to a physical printer via a printer driver. The driver can in actual fact 'print' to anything and it is this feature that allows us to create PDF files from any document. Instead of printing to a physical printer we print to a 'PDF creator' and create PDF files instead of a hard copy. The Driver Before we print a document, we have to ensure that we have our PDF printer driver installed. Apple's OSX (Leopard and higher) operating system has the facility built in, while other OS's need a driver installing. Free software Probably the most well known windows option is the free software, PDFcreatorm available at Sourceforge.net (projects/PDFcreator). This certainly does the job but comes with a slight problem. When you try to install the 'Yahoo toolbar' it is recommended that you de-select the two options for the 'Tool bar'. Otherwise, you can un-check both options and continue. Other options
Cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp is another option. This also tries to install a tool bar. This time the 'ask' one step appears, but again it can be skipped.
Program requirements
Linux again needs a driver installing and setting up. Cups-PDF seems to be the best option but because different distributions have differences in setup and configuration, it is not possible to go into detail. The forums relating to your distribution is the best option for finding a solution which suits your distribution best.

Printing

Mac OSX On Macs OS, there is a drop down in the bottom left corner of the print dialog. Selecting this allows you to save a PDF (or Postscript) file to a document of your choice. Windows CutePDF This is a simple 'File save' solution. You just need to print to the CutePDF driver and it gives you a 'Save' option which creates a simple PDF file which is very easy to use and ideal for most people. Windows PDFcreator This looks a lot more complex, but the options can safely be ignored by nearly everyone. The ability to add custom information to the PDF file prior to the 'Save' option is a nice touch. However, most people will probably go with the default options. Linux Due to the huge range of options for Linux, this guide prefers not to explore the option of "how to create files" for PDF files. The best solution is to ask questions on your distribution forum.