Virtual printers don’t provide a physical hard copy output. Instead they produce a digital document. You don’t need additional hardware and a physical printer and paper is not required.
Virtual printers are useful for sending things electronically and are easy to manage.
Print to file
When you want to print something but you can’t access the printer at that point in time, you can use print to file. Print to file will save to a format that the desired printer will understand. Then you can save the file. Once you’re at the desired printer, you can copy the file to the printer wiht the command line command: copy filename LPT1: where the filename would be the name of the print to file file and LPT1: is the printer interface. The printer will then receive the file and print out the physical hard copy. The output file from print to file can only be used and understood by the printer.
Print to PDF
PDF stands for Adobe’s Portable Document Format. PDFs allow you to take a document like Word or Excel and convert it to a PDF. Then anyone can view the PDF simply by having a PDF reader. The PDF recipient would not have to have Word or Excel on their computer. PDFs provide cross platform compatibility as well. PDF is a propriety formate of Adobe and requires specialized software to create and view a PDF. However, PDF viewers re built into many internet browsers. Also, some software wil allow you to print to PDF without any additional software.
A virtual printer that allows you to print to PDF may show up as a separate “Adobe PDF” printer. When you print to PDF, you can change certain print configurations. Then you’ll be prompted to enter a filename for your PDF output and you’ll need to specify where you want to save the output PDF file.
Print to XPS
Microsoft has a virtual output called XPS. XPS stands for XML Paper Specification. This is similar to the use case of Adobe PDF. XPS is included in all version of Windows beginning from Windows XP. You’d print to an XPS file and be able to read it in any operating system that has an XPS reader.
Print to image
Print to image will create the output as an image file. You’d be able to open this file in any program that understand that image format. Print to image is not commonly integrated into the operating system. Rather it is a feature of an application. An application may have an export or print function that allows you to save as an image file. Some third party image print drivers are also available.
