If you have ever used Spotlight to search for a phrase within a PDF document, you may have encountered the annoyingly high level zoom in Preview.

When you click on the PDF in the Spotlight results, it opens up in Preview with the search term highlighted throughout the document. This is pretty useful, however the PDF is actually zoomed in 280 percent. This means you can read the word you searched for pretty easily, but you can't see anything else.

Luckily, by changing one line in the Preview preferences, you can change the zoom level to something less extreme. The easiest way to do this is using the Terminal.

First, quit Preview if it is running and open up Terminal from the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Type the following line and press return:
defaults write com.apple.Preview Preview -dict-add PVPDFSpotlightSelectionSize 10

The 10 at the end corresponds to a 100% zoom level. By default, this number is set to 28, or 280% zoom. If you want some zoom, but not quite as much, try a number like 15 for 150% zoom.

If you don't want to use the Terminal, or you are curious to see what the command actually does, you can open up the preference file in Property List Editor (which you will only have if you have installed the Developer Tools from the Mac OS X install Disk). Go to your user folder and navigate to Library/Preferences and open up com.apple.Preview.plist using Property List Editor.

Use the expansion Triangles to navigate to Root/Preview/PVPDFSpotlightSelectionSize. Here you can see the number is 28 (or 10 if you have already changed it in the Terminal).

iCal offers a special customised print dialog, allowing you to print calendars and to do lists in a number of different ways. While iPhoto offers a nicer way to publish complete calendars, the print options in iCal give a great way to print to do lists.

Start by going to File --> Print or hitting Command-P. A large preview window appears, with many options down the right hand side. The default settings will print a normal calendar in month view. To change this to a simple to do list, change the first popup menu from Month to List. Choose your date range using the settings below, and uncheck all the boxes in the Options sections apart from "To Dos".

Your page will show all to dos dated in the range you specified, as well as any undated to dos. If you don't want any of the undated to dos to show up you can delete them, or move them to another seperate calendar that isn't set to print.

Just over a week ago, I wrote a tip explaining how to set up a desktop printer. This allowed you to quickly print files without having to open up specific applications.

However, right now I have just read this tip on the Apple Pro tips site, explaining how to print even more quickly. It can be done by Right-Clicking (Control-Clicking) on the file, and choosing Print from the contextual menu. This won't allow you any of that drag 'n' drop goodness that the other method gave, but it definitely is quicker, especially if you have a two button mouse. What's more, it doesn't require you to set anything up.

The one drawback of this method I can see is how multiple printers are handled. If you have more than one printer, say a colour inject and a b/w laser, you might prefer the desktop printer method, which allows you to drag you file onto the printer of your choice. I don't have multiple printers so I can't confirm this, but I imagine that the contextual menu will just print from your default printer.

In Mac OS X there is a way to print documents right from the desktop, without having to open up the application first. This is done by creating a "Desktop Printer," essentially an alias that you can drag and drop files on to print them.

The settings to do this are in the Printer setup Utility, which is accessible through System Preferences. Load up System preferences (from the Dock or in the Apple Menu) and choose Print and Fax. Once this preference pane has loaded, click the Printer Setup button, which will load up a Printer Info dialog. Now press Command-L to show the printer list.

Your printer(s) will be listed here. Select the printer you want to use, Go to the Printers menu and choose "Create Desktop Printer..." This will bring up a dialog asking where you want to save it. An ideal place is the desktop, which allows easy access, or a folder containing all your printers if you have more than one.

Clicking save will create an icon for your printer in the loaction you have chosen. To print a file, just drag and drop it onto the icon. Many documents will just instantly print, however others will launch the application and open up the Print dialog for you.

Note: Some stages of this process can be very slow if you are using shared printers. Be aware you could be waiting with a spinning beachball for a while if your network is a little slow.

Branin Johnson sent in this tip relating to the PDF Services in the print dialog box. He writes:

The Save to Web Receipts option in the print dialog box overwrites other documents with the same website name. There is an easy way around it however, there is an automator action controlling this function.

Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.workflow is located in the /Library/PDF Services folder of the root of the hard drive. I added two lines to this file that would append the date and time to the filename. Now, pdf files of websites with the same site title, will have unique files in the web receipts folder.

You can easily modify all of the scripts in that folder to add additional functionality to your print dialog boxes.

Here's the modified file: http://www.braninjohnson.com/downloads/Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.workflow.zip

The automator workflows are stored in the Library at the root level of your hard drive, not in your individual user library. As a result, this will change the way the web receipts function works for all users on your mac, and will require a administrator password to change. As usual I recommend creating a backup copy of the old file before you replace it with anything, just incase everything goes pear-shaped.

By now, most people know about the PDF button in the Print dialog box. It allows you to "print" web pages, receipts, recipes etc. to a PDF file, a useful way of archiving things.

This is useful, but the PDF services are even more extendable. You can create aliases to folders to go in the menu that appears when you click the button, allowing you to automatically archive items to specific folders without navigating through your entire file system.

First set up folders, possibly within your documents folder. For example have one for web receipts, one for recipes, one for important emails etc.
Next, go to your library folder, located within your user folder, and create a new folder named "PDF Services" (if you don't already have one).

Now add an alias of each of the storage folders within this PDF services folder. This can be done clickly by holding command-option and dragging the folders to the PDF services folder.

Now if you select print in any application, clicking the PDF button will reveal options to save in each of your folders.

For the more adventurous users, try adding aliases of applications such as Mail or Preview, and see what happens!