Making PDFs

Have you ever sent a carefully-made Word document to someone only to have them tell you that it looks completely different on their computer? Sometimes the page layout is different or the fonts don't show up properly. If you've had these problems before, then you might want to learn what a PDF is.

What's a PDF?
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. The copyright is owned by Adobe Systems, the same company that makes Photoshop, but they've designated it as an open standard. This means that anyone can make a program that creates or reads PDF documents. In other words, you don't need to have Adobe Acrobat in order to create or read PDFs. And this is a good thing, because even though Adobe Acrobat Reader is free, Adobe Acrobat Writer is actually a fairly expensive product.

Why Use PDFs?
When you make a PDF you actually print to a file exactly the same way you would print to a printer. The file created will look exactly the same on any computer, regardless of what operating system they have, what software they have, or what fonts they have installed. You can create a PDF using Microsoft Publisher and send that PDF to someone who doesn't have Publisher and they'll be able to view the file and print the file exactly the same as you could.

What Do I Need?
You need to have a PDF reader and a PDF writer. The best thing to use for a reader is Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's free and does a good job of displaying PDFs. The only problem with Adobe Acrobat Reader is that as Adobe adds more and more features, the program is getting bigger and bigger, so it's a long download (27.7 mb as I write this).

The second thing you need is a writer. You could buy Adobe Acrobat (but it's expensive) or you could use a free writer. The best one I've seen is PDF Creator.

How Does It Work?
Once you've downloaded and installed a PDF writer, you'll find that you have another printer installed. When you want to create a PDF, just print to the new printer the same way you'd print to any other printer. Usually the printer is called by the same name as the software you installed (such as PDF Creator or Adobe PDF). Once you select the PDF writer to print to, the program will ask you where you want to save the PDF, because you're really creating a file. Once you save the file, you have a PDF you can share with anyone.

So, if you can print from a program, you can make a PDF from that program, and you won't have to worry about how it looks "on the other end."