PDF creator

PDFCreator is a straightforward tool that allows you to create a PDF file from just about any Windows application. 

The program installs as a virtual printer driver. To create your PDF file, simply open the source document, choose Print in your application, and point it at the PDFCreator printer. Click Save, specify a file name and folder, click Save again, and that's it - in just a second or two you'll have a PDF version of your file.

If you need more control then you can optionally enter a title, author, subject or keywords for the document, and all these will be visible to readers via their PDF viewer. And clicking PDF > Options reveals a host of more advanced settings. You're able to configure exactly how images will be compressed in your PDF files, for instance. And we're not talking a single setting, like most of the competition. PDFCreator provides separate controls for colour, greyscale and monochrome images, and each let you define details like the precise JPEG compression factor involved, optional resampling method and resolution.

All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system. When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much any application, you just choose to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document. The thing that distinguishes one product from another is the number of available options.

One problem with this approach is that you need to have a program that is able to open the file on your system. If someone sends you a file created with a program you do not have, then you won't be able to open that file; therefore, you will not be able to print it. Since you can't print, you can't convert it to a PDF using a pseudo printer technique either.

The two online products in this review do not suffer from this problem, but are limited only by the file formats recognized by the online vendor. I've selected the best free products in this review by eliminating those PDF writers, suggested by readers, that were either not free or were limited time trials and basically adware (the product was free but forced the user to endure various ads as a punishment for using it).

Other options allow you to decide how and when fonts will be embedded in your file, and the colour model you want to support. Security features include the ability to encrypt your file, password-protect it, or add restrictions (you can prevent the document being printed, or modified, for instance). And it's even possible to sign your PDF file with a digital certificate, although PDFCreator won't help you create this: you'll have to source one for yourself.