PDF Users - how do you print?

[Asmor]

I AM NOT A BIG MAN

For some reason I always thought you were female. o_0 I get strange images of people online.

(In case anyone's wondering, I'm a fat male 23-year-old geek with long, lush brown hair, a mangy beard, and blue eyes which apparently sometimes turn green)

*Perfect examples of a PDF that is not friendly with Staples software is Necromancer Games' Book of Eldritch Sorcery and Paizo's Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetter. The last page of both are not 8-1/2" x 11". Staples shrinks the page down to 8-1/2" x 11" and shrinks down every page to match. In Necromancer's case, the last page was landscape. Staples software rotated it to be portrit. It also rotated every other page in the document. I was unable to find any way around this and still never printed out the whole of the book. I was less concerned about printing out Paizo's books since I subscribe and get the PDF and the printed book.

If you emailed Staples yourself*, I'm sure they'd be happy to accommodate you. While they've got software to automate things as much as possible, ultimately it is just a human who's doing everything, and just like Burger King you can have it your way.

I've always been very happy with Staples for print services. I've printed a lot of stuff there. My preference is spiral bound, glossy color cover, clear transparent cover on top of that, and a vinyl back cover, with black and white duplex printing on the interior. I've had smaller books like Elements of Magic and larger books like the Necropolis setting for Savage Worlds done up this way, and it's an absolutely joy.

Here's the advantages of doing it this way, as I see them:

1. Cost. It's actually pretty cheap, especially considering how expensive ink is.

2. Quality. It's extremely high quality, and to get that kind of quality at home it would probably cost you a lot more. Also, I don't know if it's the paper I use, the binding, or what, but if I print something and stick it in a 3-ring binder, it's a pain to actually flip between pages. The pages all stick together. Getting it printed, the pages are nice and easy to flip.

3. Convenience. It's a lot of work to do one of these up nice. Hell, do you even have a spiral binding machine thingie at home? I don't!

4. Get it done right. If they screw it up, make them do it again correctly. If you screw it up, you have to eat the wasted time and money yourself. Once I was misquoted over the phone on laminating and they ended up giving me the misquoted price, which was an order of magnitude cheaper than the actual price, without any proof that I was actually misquoted. This was for laminating maps, which it turns out is actually really expensive. In general, they tend to get stuff done right the first time, but on the occasions when they've made errors they always fix them when I point it out.

*Usually the email address for the copy center is cc1234@staplescopycenter.com, where 1234 is the store's number-- it shows the store's number on the website when you order it, or you can call them if you're not sure. You may or may not have to email them the original PDF, as well, I don't know if their software actually alters your PDF or just tells them what settings to use.

 

[Voadam]

I usually only print out single pages I need at the table for a specific night. Such as a monster entry of a monster I plan to use.

I prefer options for no borders such as in Bastion Press pdfs (two copies, one with borders for pretty printing and one with no borders for onscreen and ink saving copies).

When I printed out whole books I tried to use double sided printing when I could but often the printers I had didn't have that option and most ended up single sided, much to my frustration in dragging around twice as much paper.