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Print, Print Setup, and Page Setup Dialog Boxes

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Printing a document is often as easy as knowing where the P key is on your keyboard (Command-P in Mac OS X, Control-P in Windows, following by the pressing the shown dialog box's default button to complete the printing).

There are various options to refine the printing process however. These options are conventionally located in the Page Setup menu selection or the Print dialog box (both Mac OS X and Windows); although different software offer vastly different extended printing features, the basics tend to be the same, including paper size and orientation (Page Setup) as well as layout, paper handling, paper feed and error handling (Print dialog box).

The most significant difference may at times be the printer in question; some large-scale network printers come with not only higher print capacity, but also additional features, and these are reflected in the software configuration. A useful feature built into the operating system of Mac OS X worth mentioning is that you can save to a PDF file rather than print to a printer.

An often used feature is portrait (the sheet in the upright position) versus landscape (the sheet sideways); while the former is default, you can easily switch to the latter in Page Setup by changing the orientation. In Page Setup, you can also scale the print by specifying a number in percent different from 100; related to this is the more advanced shrink to fit e.g. the page width, generally supported by the specific software application that you are running.

Many modern personal printers allow for printing in both black and white as well as color; physically there is a separate cartridge for color, and there are additional color options in the Print dialog box which address how to fine-tune such printouts. For your convenience, most color printers are able to print a self-test page without even being connected to a computer.

Mac OS X Print Dialog Box

Mac OS X Page Setup