Adobe Print to PDF

[Chatorian]

Hello, I am needing help with adobe printer services. I am tryingto print to a PDF so I need to get "Adobe PDF"  listed under the print drop-down in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC but I am having trouble. Please Help

I have attracted 2 photos of what my options are and what I need it to say.

[Test Screen Name]

This printer driver is not free. It comes with Acrobat, thipaid-for big brother of the free Acrobat Reader, in Windows only. Note however that printing PDF to PDF is generally considered a Really Bad Idea. 

[mkjnekel]

Thipaid? I have no clue what that is; can't find a useful link on Google. Also: you can't just say 'printing PDF to PDF is generally considered a Really Bad Idea.', if you don't put an explanation.

[mkjnekel]

You can try CutePDF; that is free. And there are other freeware tools like that.

Option 5 at https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/add-pdf-printer-manually.html is incorrect; at least on my computer. I just installed Acrobat Reader DC, and there is no option to Documents\*.PDF. User 'Test Screen Name' says you have to pay first (I think $18 a month, which is a ridiculous large amount if you ONLY want to be able to print to PDF, and maybe only 'once or twice' per year). But there is nothing mentioned about needing a paid account on  the above link. So... that is very stupid.

[Test Screen Name]

The page you quote is entirely correct. You don't pay for Acrobat, so looking for instructions in the help file for Acrobat isn't going to give you relevant information. It might be useful for every help page for Acrobat to start "This is the help for Acrobat, a paid-for product. This does not apply to the free Acrobat Reader. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't a good choice of name", but Adobe aren't going to do that.

If you want to know why printing PDF to PDF is a bad idea, search for "re-frying". Or just keep doing it, it's you that will face the problems, not me.

[mkjnekel]

"perhaps it wasn't a good choice of name", but Adobe aren't going to do that."

Well... who's fault is that? I searched with Google, which almost everyone would do. You have to know that there is difference between Acrobat and Acrobat Reader in the first place, before you could recognize you are in the wrong manual. Only a very small percentage of office users even know that there is a paid version.

Re-frying is just another word for 'reducing quality' (roughly spoken). Why does it need four posts before that is clear? You could have said that right away. Ah, wait, you said: 'it's you that will face the problems'. Now I now you didn't care to explain it the first time; you don't really care for others in this regard... 😉

Re-frying is often no issue, especially if you keep the original method (like combining a text-document with a database to create hundreds of letters) which creates the PDF. Generally, I think only 'advanced' users will ever note any difference between the original and the fried version. Compare users who edit a jpg; for example add an author logo to a photo and resave (re-fry) it: extremely few people care that the quality is reduced after every edit on a jpg. (There is lossless jpg, like jpg2000, but no 'normal' user knows about that or uses it.)