Tips and Tricks

Printing Tips

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Printing

Perhaps not surprisingly, in general terms, printing is the process of getting content displayed on your screen into a physical and more permanent representation — i.e. onto paper.

Normally there is little difficulty in doing this, but there do exist certain differences between the two devices (display and printer) which impose some limitations that need to be accounted for during the transition from glowing dots on the screen to blobs of ink on a sheet of paper.

Generally these hurdles come down to three things:

  1. Windows on the screen are of different size to a standard sheet of paper
  2. The range of colours (gamut) each medium can reproduce differs
  3. Paper is static, while screen images are often dynamic or interactive.

Beginner

  • The Americans being who they are, will happily assume you normally print onto US Letter size paper. Each new document takes this size to be the default choice. Be sure to check the paper size before printing under File > Page Setup.

  • If you don't need to print the whole document, you can select just the range of pages to be printed. This is done in the print dialogue box, under Copies and Pages.

Intermediate

  • To change the default paper size (from US Letter),
    • OS X 10.3: go to System Preferences > Print & Fax > Default paper size in Page Setup.
    • OS X 10.2: run the Printer Utility in the Utilities folder, and then Printer Utility > Preferences and select it there.

Advanced

  • If you regularly use combinations of print settings (e.g. certain paper type, layout options etc.) and don't want to have to keep entering these settings each time you print, you can save the settings as a preset in the Print dialogue box. Be aware though, that the settings will only apply to the printer you originally defined them for.