Chapter 3. Printing

Printers and other output devices bridge the ethereal world inside our computers and the tangible world outside. We can use them to obtain physical representations of our digital concepts, and to create relatively permanent records of our activities and projects. They also have myriad settings that can affect the appearance of our printouts.

Even though we live in a digital age, our day-to-day lives are still firmly rooted in paper. For the average Mac user, printing usually involves plugging in an inkjet printer and forgetting about it. For designers, however, there's a lot more involved. Your print devices often include inkjet and laser printers, and plate and film imagers. Understanding how these technologies work with Mac OS X makes it much easier to create outputs that are correct, or just to print invoices for your clients.

Tip

Printer Setup Utility isn't the only place to find the settings for all of your printers. The Print & Fax preference pane gives you access to all of the options you'll find in Printer Setup Utility.