Before considering how to print a PDF, let's find out what kind of format it is, how it differs from other types of documents, and why it is gaining more and more popularity these days.
Literally, "PDF" means "portable document format " (portable document format). The program on which this type of file is based is Adobe Acrobat. If we discard all the technical subtleties, we can conclude that a PDF document is the best (and maybe the only) type suitable for printing documents in the form in which they were created, without formatting distortions that usually occur when viewing documents in Word on a third-party computer. As a rule, PDF files are used to optimize the printing of documents with images and complex formatting, since PDF implies the inability to edit an existing document and freezes a complex document in its original visual form. In principle, this editing is still possible, but only when using the special professional version of Acrobat. In general, the PDF format is a guarantee that the document will be printed exactly in the form in which it was originally created.
In order to print a PDF-file, you simply need to press the Control + P (Command + P for Mac) keyboard shortcut standard for all programs or a file / print, then select the desired printer and print the whole document or separate necessary pages. Everything seemed to be simple. However, here there may be questions and subtleties. First of all, sometimes a document on a computer screen looks right, but when printed, instead of some characters, hieroglyphs are obtained. This may occur due to incorrect installation of the driver or due to the absence on the computer from which the printout is made of the fonts contained in the document. To solve this problem, you can use the additional features of Acrobat. After clicking Fail / Print, go to the Advanced item in the lower left corner of the print window and tick the Print as Image field in the upper right corner. In this case, the computer will perceive the document as an image (which follows from the name of the function), and there will be no problems with visualization and printing.
This option is also useful if the color scheme of the printed document does not match the image on the screen. When choosing Print as Image, this problem is most often resolved as well.
Some files are protected from printing, apparently in order to protect copyrights and copyrights. How to print a pdf file in this situation?
There are several options. First of all, you can use the excellent recognition program ABBYY FineReader 7.0 (or its earlier versions), which allows you to convert a file from Acrobate to Word document format, in addition, giving you the ability to edit. The conversion takes a few minutes, but it is a universal tool for solving many issues caused by the slowness and obstinacy of the PDF format.
How to print a PDF in the case of a multi-page file, if the above methods for some reason are not suitable.
For small files of several pages, you can use the "Print Screen" option by simply opening the problem file in full screen and pressing this key, which is located in the upper right corner of the keyboard. Then you need to copy the image on the screen to Photoshop or any other graphic editor and save the necessary part of the resulting image in a separate file. For multi-page documents, this may take a little longer, but the problem will be solved.
You can also try to open a naughty image in Photoshop itself, saving it page by page as a jpg file, and then create a multi-page document with inserted pictures in Word and minimize the margin size for optimal use of page space.
There are tons of answers to the question of how to print PDF files. Each of them is effective and acceptable for use, the only thing is which of the above options is suitable in each specific situation.