Hello everyone! Here is a thread to talk about getting the most out of PDF attachments.

Well, here’s an obvious one—every Windows user should have PDFCreator installed. It’s free (open source), and just adds “PDFCreator” to your list of printers, so anytime you print something from any program, you can save it as a PDF instead of sending it to your actual printer.

OS X users have this feature built-in (check your printer dialog next time you print—there’s a checkbox), so you can do the same thing. Users of OpenOffice on any OS also have their own PDF button, so that’s one fewer step.

Anyway, I use it all the time—receipts for any online payment, documents destined for Postful, or anything else I would have printed out a few years ago… now it’s all saved as PDF, organized nicely, and backed up, instead of wasting paper and slipping down back behind my desk.

As far as Postful goes, I’ve been using only PDF; I know other formats are accepted, but it feels safer to print to PDF first (and see exactly how it’s going to turn out) rather than emailing it off and hoping the pages break where I’m hoping they will, margins aren’t mangled, fonts are all supported, etc.. Plus, I don’t need to look up to see if you handle a particular kind of document… as long as the application can print it, I can send it as PDF.

The next logical step should be “Print to Postful”—instead of the PDF save location, the dialog would ask for the address line… now that would be slick.

We definitely encourage people to use PDF for the best control of the design. Our production process uses PDF all the way through so it’s the best way to control exactly what goes to press.

As for a Postful print driver… no timeline yet, but it will be coming.