Use a Mac and there’s one thing you can take for granted. You can print to a PDF document from just about any Mac application. PDF documents are ideal for sending to other users without losing any of the formatting. PDFs keep the layout of the original application, can embed the fonts, images and any special styles you’ve created within your design tool. Indeed, commercial printers now use PDF documents to create their material as they know the results will always match the source.

The key advantage of using PDF documents is that most users can open an read the contents, irrespective of their operating system. It’s easy to find a decent PDF reader for Windows; we would recommend Foxit Reader as a lightweight PDF viewer.

Problem is that creating PDF documents on your Windows machine is less straightforward. You have to rely on third-party technology. Most people would think of Adobe Acrobat, but that’s very expensive, aimed at business users and totally overkill for most users. Luckily for you there are now many free PDF creation tools that will enable you to output a PDF document from most applications.

doPDF is one of the best. Install the application and, when you want to produce a PDF, simply choose doPDF as your printer drive and a destination for your document. You can also choose to output your PDF as a low-quality 72DPI document (suitable for distribution by email or download from the Internet) or as a commercial-quality 1200DPI file suitable for printing. If you need more features, such as PDF editing, you can considering upgrading to the commercial novaPDF or an alternative, such as NitroPDF.

Since 11.5 doPDF now includes a Premium version for $4.99 which includes no ads in the save dialogue and password protection.