Turning "save as" into "print"

When the goal is a PDF of a web page, a report or an invoice, the most reliable route is not an export command but the print dialogue, with a virtual printer as its destination. That approach survives every program, including the old internal tools that will never get an export button: if the software can print, it can produce a PDF, and what comes out keeps the layout of the print preview rather than the layout of a re-flowed document.

This is one of the long-running names in that category. Installing it adds a printer to the system, and from then on any program's print dialogue lists it. Nothing else changes, and that is the whole appeal of the idea: the feature lives where people already look, in a dialogue they already know.

More than a format conversion

The panel that appears before the file is written is where this one earns its place. A password can be set with 128-bit encryption, which is the difference between a file that is merely awkward to open and one that is actually protected. A text watermark can be applied with adjustable size, rotation and transparency, which is how a draft or a confidential copy is marked without editing the source document at all.

Document properties can be filled in at the same moment, so the title and author fields are correct before the file ever leaves the machine, rather than being fixed later by whoever remembers. And the output can be merged into an existing PDF, appended or placed in front, which quietly turns every print into a document assembly step — the fastest way to build a bundle of invoices or a combined report from separate sources.

The output format is not limited to PDF either: image formats such as PNG, JPEG and TIFF are available from the same dialogue, which is useful when the destination is a slide, a ticket or a system that only accepts pictures. For repeated work there is a command line and a COM component, so a nightly job can print a hundred reports to a hundred files without a person in the loop.

Licensing and the enterprise angle

Personal use is free, and so is commercial use up to ten users; beyond that the commercial edition takes over. The reason many organisations choose this particular tool, though, is not the price: it works in terminal server environments, so a centrally installed copy serves every session without each user installing anything. That is the scenario where a virtual printer stops being a convenience and becomes infrastructure, and where a tool that breaks under multi-session use is worse than no tool at all.

Updates keep to a rhythm rather than a schedule of announcements. The current build is 2026.1.0.3002, and the notes for it mention corrections to the mail function and to problems around the conversion engine underneath.

Where it is the wrong tool

A virtual printer is the right answer for output that already exists on screen and needs to become a file. It is the wrong answer for editing: nothing here lets you reorder pages, redact a paragraph, sign a document or fill in a form. Those are separate jobs with separate tools, and expecting a printer to do them is how people end up disappointed by a program that does exactly what it claims.

Almost nothing to maintain

One reason this style of tool survives is that it costs nothing to keep. There is no account, no subscription to renew, no background service to watch, and the files never leave the machine on their way to becoming a PDF — the conversion happens locally, which for a document containing client data or internal figures is the property that matters most.

A tool like this should be as invisible as possible: install it once, forget it, and find it waiting in the print dialogue whenever it is needed. Fifteen years in this category is an argument in itself, and with a free licence there is little reason to look further.