What is a PDF printer? How Can I Create PDF files?

Posted on: February 27th, 2009

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. This format has become the de-facto standard for exhcanging documents. It’s platform independent, works the same way whether you use a Windows machine, an Apple, or running Linux or your PC. The PDF file format ensures that the document will looks and prints the same on all computers.

That sounds good, right? Now how can you make your own PDF files?

You can buy an expensive software, like Adobe Acrobat (the full version) that allows you to create PDF files and later edit them. However editing is not a straightforward process in case of PDF’s which were design to display and print faithfully, they are not like word documents.

You can also use OpenOffice.org which is a free Office suite software, comparable (and compatible) with Microsoft Office. It does have the built in ability to create PDF files from documents.

Another avenue is using a PDF printer, many of which, is free software. These have less features than the full fledged Adobe software, most importantly missing the feature to reproduce links in the documents. Many times this is not an issue.

So what is a PDF printer?

It’s a virtual printer, that behaves just like any other printer installed on your computer, except that it’s end product is not a printed page but a PDF file.

Let’s see an example:
- You are looking at this article and would like to save it for future reference.
- You select to print this page, either by pressing CTRL+P (which is an almost universal key shortcut for print), or by selecting File -> Print from the menu.
- In the next step you select your PDF printer and press OK.
- Now you’ll be asked to save the file (the PDF file). You select the folder and name.

That’s all. The page will be turned into a PDF file which you can later just open and read at your convenience.

Using a PDF printer, you can make a PDF from anything that you can print.

There are actually 3 free PDF printers that I can offer here:

Bullzip PDF printer: This one is probably the easiest to install and has more features than the other ones. With this one you can even create picture files (JPG or PNG) instead of PDF. Most PDF printers lack this feature.
Download: http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php

CutePDF writer: I’ve been using this for years and works quite well. It needs two components installed to work – just follow the instructions.
Download: http://www.cutepdf.com/

PDF995: This is a good one too. Similar to CutePDF it needs two components installed (A converter and a printer driver).
Download: http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

By the way, for opening PDFs I recommend using FoxIt reader which is several times smaller and faster than Adobe Acrobat Reader. http://filehippo.com/download_foxit/
It also has some extra tools, like typewriter tool that allows you to easily fill out PDF form – you can’t save the filled out form (in the free version of FoxIt) but you can print it to a PDF printer and save it that way.

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