Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Printing, Faxing, Fonts, and Graphics

The Macintosh may be only the eight-percent solution in the mainstream business world, but in the graphics and printing industries, it’s the 800-pound gorilla. You’d better believe that when Apple designed Mac OS X, it worked very hard to keep its graphics and printing fans happy.

This chapter tackles printing, faxing, fonts, graphics, ColorSync, and PDF (Acrobat) files, which Mac OS X uses as an everyday exchange format—one of the biggest perks in Mac OS X.

Mac Meets Printer

One of the biggest complaints about the original Mac OS X was that at the outset, not many printer companies had rewritten their printer drivers—the software that controls various printer models—for Mac OS X. Fortunately, the situation has improved: Today’s Mac OS X comes with hundreds of printer drivers from Epson, HP, Lexmark, Canon, and others.

Setting Up a Printer

One beauty of Mac OS X is that setting up a printer for the first time is incredibly easy. The first time you want to print something, follow this guide:

1. Connect the printer to the Mac, and then turn the printer on.

   Inkjet printers usually connect to your USB jack. Laser printers generally hook up to your Ethernet connector. (If you’re on an office network, the laser printer may already be connected somewhere else on the network, saving you this step. If you’re hooking the printer straight into your Mac’s Ethernet jack, you may need an Ethernet crossover cable to connect it, rather than a standard Ethernet ...