For a long time, Microsoft had a system of printing known as Print to XPS or XML Paper Specification and you had to use a special XPS reader to open the document on a computer that had a printer in order to print it. With advent of Print to PDF, we can now create PDF documents on the fly. However, if you want an image you can edit you need a third party program.
Win2PDF
Win2PDF is a specialist printer driver that enables anyone to create PDF files in different formats:
- PDF/A – PDF for Archiving: This embeds fonts and everything is self-contained in the PDF file. There are no external links.
- PDF as image only: This basically prevents the document from being searched by turning page content into image format.
- PDF as searchable: This converts the text in the PDF into searchable, preserving vector graphics or using OCR it can interpret images as searchable text.
- Print as TIFF – Save the pages as Tagged Image File Format
- Print to XPS – Save as XML Paper Specification
- Print to Text – Convert the printout to plain text.
- Print to SVG – Convert the printout to Scalable Vector Graphics.
When printing with their included Win2Image printer driver, you can print as an image:
- Print to JPEG
- Print to PNG
- Print to GIF
- Print to BMP
Additionally, PDF files can be merged together.
The Pro version adds additional support for:
- Watermarked images (shown behind pages)
- Stamped images (shown above pages)
- Password protection
- Restrictions on printing/saving
- Converting PDF to Word Documents
- Batch conversion
- Auto renaming PDF files by the contents in the PDF, such as invoice numbers; names etc.
Win2PDF costs £27.51 and Win2PDF Pro costs £54.24. There is a free trial available, which adds their copyright page to PDF files.
