Well the term PDF actually means Portable Document Format, but in the printing industry it really is one of our best friends.  So in our first Tips & Tricks entry I want to introduce you to our good friend (soon to be yours too) the PDF and give you a few Tools to help you turn any document you can print into a PDF.

From Wikipedia:
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.

So what does this mean?  Basically it means that if you can turn your document into a PDF it will look the same no matter what computer you open it on.  A lot of people are surprised by the fact that a document can look different depending on what computer it was made on and what computer it is being viewed on.  Microsoft Word is the program we have the biggest problem with here at Allegra, but it can happen in any program.  Here’s an example:

The document below was created on a computer here in our office in Microsoft Word, then saved and opened on another computer also in Microsoft Word:

Original

Opened on a Different Computer

See what a difference just another computer can make?  Without giving us any errors or indication that the file looks different, Word has replaced our fonts, changed our margins and lost our pumpkin clipart.

A PDF is the solution to our problem.  When a document is turned into a PDF all the Fonts, Images and layout are saved to a file that will look the same no matter what computer we view it on.  So now the question is… How can I turn my files into a PDF?  Well, what you need depends on what type of computer you have.

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