What is PDF Printer?

A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resemble that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer.

When a user requests that a document be "printed" by a virtual printer, then, instead of having the document printed on paper or other material, the underlying software would process its contents in some other way, often resulting in a file being produced or the information being transmitted.

Here is the basic operating principle of a virtual printer: once this software is installed, a new printer appears on the system. Whenever a document is sent to it, the program attempting to print converts the file into a standard data stream (usually, a program written in PostScript). The driver of a conventional printer converts it into a series of commands physically to control a printing head. A virtual printer handles the stream differently, for instance, by saving it as PDF document or JPEG image.

PDF printer is a kind of virtual printers. It is also called "PDF virtual printer" or "PDF Creator". PDF printer is commonly used to make a PDF file to create and protect the format of a document, so it looks exactly the same when viewed on a computer screen as it does when printed.

Virtual printer can also be used to convert a document to an image file like JPEG, so it may be universally read without concern for missing fonts. This is an alternative to the PDF file. Other file types for image conversion are TIFF, GIF, PNG and BMP.

Here is a list of free virtual printer software we recommend: PDFCreator, Bullzip PDF Printer, DoPDF and PrimoPDF. Adobe System's commercial PDF authoring suite includes Adobe Distiller, a virtual PDF printer for converting documents to PDF files. However Adobe Distiller is not included with the free Adobe Reader software product.