The PDF format is great for sharing documents with family/friends and printers because they retain all the fonts, formatting and layout of the original, but can’t be easily edited – they can be as secure as you want them to be. In fact, if you want any document professionally printed these days, many printers will actually insist on PDFs (some free advice: NEVER give them documents in Microsoft Publisher format – trust me, they will get shirty with you).

A recent IMG Quickie article “Windows Software: PDF Creator” told about a free utility for creating PDFs in Windows, but what about Mac OS X? Fortunately and conveniently, Mac OS X comes with the ability to create PDFs built-in. In fact, you can create a PDF from just about any Mac program around, even if that program doesn’t offer the feature itself.

You access this ability from the Print dialog box – basically, if you can print it, you can PDF it. Click the “PDF” button at the bottom left of the Print dialog box, and you are given a list of options. 
Select “Save as PDF”, it’ll ask for a name & location to save your new PDF to, and voila – instant PDF!

You may want to take the time to check out some of the other options; for instance, if you think the PDF is going to be too big, select “Compress PDF”. If you’re security-conscious, you can select “Encrypt PDF”. Or if you want a quick way to create a PDF and then attach it to an email in one fell swoop, you can select “Mail PDF”.