PDF Printer for Windows 8

PDF Printer for Windows 8 is a virtual printer that allows you to convert a document to PDF format from any application that features support for printing.

Contrary to what its name implies, the program doesn’t target Windows 8 computers exclusively, being compatible with Windows XP and higher for that matter. It’s true that it behaves differently on Metro enabled systems, but we’ll explain that later.

Similar to many other document converters, the application relies on a printer driver that allows it to receive the information from any application and to gather it into a PDF file with customizable output options.

This type of approach is less common for a document converter, but is equally efficient, although beginners might encounter difficulties carrying out the task.

Here’s how it works: let’s say you’re writing a document in your editor of choice. In order to convert it to a PDF file, simply initiate the printing dialog, at which point you should be able to locate a list of installed printers.

Select the one named ‘PDF Printer’ and press the ‘Preferences’ or ‘Properties’ button in order to retrieve the configuration dialog. Here you can customize various parameters, such as paper size, quality, orientation, image compression, font embedding, as well as to encrypt the final document with a user-defined password.

On Windows 8, this configuration dialog won’t be available. However, it is possible to customize the process to some extent if you start the printing process from a Metro-enabled application, but the configuration dialog isn’t as rich as for other operating systems – you can only customize the page orientation and the color mode.

Considering all of the above, it’s quite obvious that PDF Printer for Windows 8 is quite deceitful in what Windows 8 usage is concerned, despite its name. Paradoxically, users of other OSes benefit from a wider array of options.