iOS has been crafted into the ultimate mobile work station, especially with the addition of the iWork mobile suite for the iPad. You can create and edit documents in Pages, make a slideshow for an important meeting in Keynote, and put together graphs and stats with Numbers. When you’re finished, you can print everything out with AirPrint. Clearly, you don’t need your Mac with you to get work done on the go.
But, not every printer is AirPrint-compatible, which is a serious bummer for the serious worker bee, or student who needs to quickly get their paper printed out before deadline. That’s why we’re going to help: whether your current set up supports AirPrint or not, we’ll show you three ways to get those digital documents tangible paper form one way or another. Read on to find out how.
Printing with AirPrint
If you are lucky enough to have an AirPrint-compatible set up, then you will have no problem picking up any application that supports printing, and being able to find and print to your printers.
You can print from the Pages app by going to Tools Share and Print Print. In the standard AirPrint dialog, select the printer, and then set the range and number of copies. Tap on the Print button to begin spooling the printer job.
Printing with Printer-specific Apps
Many printer manufacturers, including Epson, Brother, and HP have released printer-specific applications for printing. Here’s a list of printer-specific applications that we were able to find on the App Store:
- Epson iPrint
- Brother iPrint Scan
- HP ePrint
- Lexmark Mobile Printing
- Canon Easy Photo Print
Many of these printer-specific apps include the ability to scan documents as well, if you have an all-in-one printer, for instance.
Using the Epson iPrint application, we were easily able to print photos, saved documents, print documents stored on Evernote, Google Docs, Dropbox, and Box.net, and were even able to print web pages and scan documents directly onto our iOS devices.
The downside to using many of these printer-specific apps is that you will not be able to print directly from iOS applications such as the iWork suite of apps.
Printing with AirPrint + Printopia
If you want to print from directly from your iOS apps, and don’t have an AirPrint-compatible set up, you’re not completely out of luck. With an application called Printopia ($19.99), you are able to turn your Mac into an AirPrinter-friendly server that will accept printer jobs from your iOS devices and process them through a printer connected to the Mac. As an added bonus, Printopia also allows you to send print jobs directly to Evernote and a few other services, right from your iOS device.
If you wish to give Printopia a try, check out our installation guide that we’ve previously published.
Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article’s author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
Article source: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/3_ways_easily_print_documents_your_ipad_or_iphone
