Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 8. Printing Documents

In This Chapter

• Understanding color and black-and-white printing

• Choosing a printer

• Outputting your work

You can print documents in many ways with Adobe Creative Suite 4. Similarly, you can print many different kinds of documents. You can create anything from a CD-ROM sticker to a 300-page book to a T-shirt iron-on transfer using the programs you find in the Creative Suite. But whatever you're working on, knowing the options that are available for printing your work is a good idea. Knowing the kinds of printers you can work with, what to buy (and from where) in order to use them, and how to save your work help improve the quality of the print job when you've finished your work.

Choosing Printers

When it comes to printers, you encounter hundreds of options at a great variety of prices. Printers can differ greatly when it comes to quality, cost of maintenance, and the speed at which the printer can print. Some inkjet printers excel at printing full-color photos but aren't great at printing text; a low-end or medium-end laser printer may print black-and-white documents at good speed and quality, but you can't print in color.

Using consumer printers

Currently, the most common type of consumer (home) printer is an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers work by spraying ink stored in cartridges onto a sheet of paper while it passes through the printer. This type of printer is common in households because it's the least expensive type of color printer. It's also versatile. ...