Article: Generate PDFs Easily with Mac OS X

Suppose you created a document with all sorts of special fonts, graphics, and styling and you want to share it. Previously, the most accepted way to share documents with people involved either hoping that the formatting matched, or convert the file with Adobe Acrobat.

Although Acrobat does the job, you don’t have to buy it to take advantage of the same capabilties. PDF files are great for sharing things that you don’t want changed. They are also great for programs that generate items for printout that you don’t necessarily want to print at that particular time. Furthermore, you can open a file made in Pages, Photoshop, or whatever else you can think of on a Mac or PC that does not have that application installed.

While you won’t get fancy capabilities in your PDFs, such as forms or usage restrictions, you can generate PDFs without any special features, thanks to the built-in PDF capabilities of Mac OS X. Most expert Mac users will already know this, but I’m surprised how many people in my daily life that don’t know about this.

To create a PDF in any Mac application, simply go to File and Print. As long as you have the standard print dialog box, you can click the PDF button in the lower-left corner and select “Save as PDF…” On older versions of Mac OS X, there’s a “Save as PDF…” button. Pick a file name and the save location and you’re all set!