Introduction
Let me open this review by suggesting a scenario that many of us can relate to. You are writing a document for presentation, be it a result of work, school, or simply a project you have undertaken for informational purposes. You put in the hours doing the research, the outline, and finally you finish writing your work of art and print a copy of it. You peruse your copy only to see that the printed format does not best showcase the thoughts and ideas you wanted to convey. Serious formatting changes will be necessary to achieve your goal.
For me this scenario is all to real, since a goodly portion of my job consists of doing statistical analysis which is disseminated to sometimes as many as 2000 people in our organization. I've often wished for a utility that would allow me more versatility to make format changes that would extend across the entirety of my presentation without the need of rampant revisions.
You may think to yourself in this day of electronic media why even bother to print it? The fact of the matter is that many people achieve more of a comfort level having a hard copy of the work you have produced. In many cases the formatting of such a document can make or break your entire presentation. This also does not take into account the fact that many times the mindset of you and/or your superiors changes (often numerous times) about how the printed information could be formatted for the best appeal to the reader.
All this being said, today we're going to feature a software utility, FinePrint by FinePrint Software that will fulfill many of your needs when it comes to refining the printing of your document for presentation.
FinePrint Software's Product Description of FinePrint & Features
"FinePrint is a Windows printer driver that saves ink, paper and time by controlling and enhancing printed output."
Features
- Print Preview: Universal print preview with editing capability. Easily add blank pages, delete pages, and re-sequence jobs.
- Ink Saver: Provides options to convert colored text to black and skip graphics.
- Multiple Pages on a single sheet: Print 2, 4 or 8 pages on a single sheet of paper.
- Watermarks Headers and Footers: Watermark, header and footer option allows documents to be marked with the date, time, system variables or custom text.
- Forms and Letterheads: Allows the simplified creation of electronic forms and letterhead. The preview feature shows how output will appear before you print it to ensure correct alignment.
- Combine Print Jobs: Allows multiple documents to be combined together as a single print job. This is useful for creating booklets based on web pages, etc.
- File saving: Save pages and jobs to TIFF, JPEG, BMP, text and FP formats.
- Double Sided Printing Support: Booklet making and double sided printing are supported with all documents and printers. Booklets create a professional touch to all documents and are easy to read and carry. Double sided printing cuts paper use in half and reduces travel weight.
- Paper Scaling: Allows large pages to be scaled to that they fit on standard paper sizes such as letter or A4.
- Adjustable Margins: Margin adjustment allows for increased text sizes for better readability, by using more of the printable area on the page.
- Gutter Support: Gutter capability provides space for binding documents.
- Multiple FinePrinters: Multiple FinePrinters can be created. This allows the creation of "virtual printers" that have different pre-defined settings. For example, you could have a "booklet printer" that automatically prints a booklet or a "letterhead printer" that prints on your letterhead without the FinePrint dialog box appearing.
- Easy server deployment: Install on a server as a shared printer for easy group or enterprise deployment.
Installation
Installation is very straight forward and is accomplished by simply double clicking on the program icon which will take you through the complete installation process, step-by-step.
Fig 1. FinePrint installed as a printer driver
Once installation is completed access to the FinePrint program was in the form of a printer driver. Next, determine the document that you want to print. Open that document and select the FinePrint driver without selecting any properties.
