Mac Tip: Print To PDF

Mac Tip: Print To PDF

This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.


How To: Print To PDF

Did you know that you can print to a PDF document directly from any application on your MAC provided printing is supported.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is arguably the most common readable document format across any platform of computer.

Some of you may remember the difficulties only a few years ago of needing additional software to create a PDF document. Now, it is built into your MAC and is a simple click away.

To bring up with PDF options all you need to do is go to print your document by going to either File > Print in the menu bar or by pressing Command + P on your keyboard. You will see the drop down options in the bottom lefthand corner titled PDF.

In the default PDF menu on a MAC running Lion 10.7 operating system you will be able to:

– Open PDF in Preview (the MAC’s default PDF reader).

– Save as a PDF (allowing the user to save the document as a PDF file to their hard drive).

– Save as Postscript (most commonly used in the printing and graphic arts industries and as such most users would not use this setting.

– Fax PDF (if you have a Fax machine set up with your computer can then have the program send the fax directly to the recipient).

– Add PDF to iTunes (allows users to then take a PDF and add it to the iBooks App via iTunes to read at a later date)

– Mail PDF (allows the user to email the document using the default mail application).

– Save as PDF to Aperture/iPhoto

– Save PDF to folder as JPEG

– Save PDF to folder as TIFF

– Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder (this is very handy should you wish to save any receipts from online transactions).

– Edit Menu (simply allows the user to add, delete or change the priority of any current PDF options).