Various Methods to Print PDF's from Java

Due to the company I am currently employed by I have had quite alot of experience in trying to print various documents through Java. Below I'm going to simply give brief examples of how printing in Java can be achieved. The post relates mainly to printing PDF's but probably can be applied to many types of document. From experience printing a document in Java is just as much a art (with lots of luck) than it is a science.There are so many factors which will effect the quality and ease of printing a document that it usually is a time consuming task to get it correct and from experience compromises usually have to be taken.

Factors such as:

• The Printer: There are thousands of printers out there, each one may handle spooling and a document different
• Print colour profiles can change from printer to printer
• Windows and Linux variations in colour, depth etc.
• The print driver language installed will make a difference, e.g. PostScript, PCL5, PCL6 etc.
• Paper quality
• Available font
• Graphics quality inside your document
• One print library will render the same PDF print job differently to another.
• Usually each printer has a multitude of settings which can be tweaked, which ones make a difference?

The list goes on and on, and the most annoying and time consuming bit of this is as the deliverable is a physical piece of paper the only way to test this is to slowly work your way through the options, printing out lots and lots of paper and examining them by eye. Also since things like colour interpretation are so unique to each individual you will often disagree with others about which one is the best fit. I'm sure there are some really fancy pieces of kit which will do this measurement but they usually cost lots of money!

Below are some of the various means I have used in the past to print PDF documents through Java. I have used a few of the below libraries in production before, changing when better alternatives are found or problems come up. You can print document directly through the java.x.print libraries which come with the JDK but these libraries don't handle PDF's very well. (or atleast the PDF's I have had to print) I think the problem with most of these libraries boils down to the interpretation from PDF to the required print language.

Adobe Reader (Free)


I have once used this in a production environment but if you start to print large volumes of documents problems soon start to arise. A common issue I have experienced is that Adobe Reader doesn't shut down properly and after several days running the windows box running the application crashed due to memory issues. Its not an scalable or elegant solution to a problems that can be complex in reality.


ICEPdf Printing ($)

I have used this in production before and is a comprehensive library however incompatibilities arrose when new printers where purchased and thus we have moved away from ICEPdf.


JPDF Printing ($)

JPDF is a simple to use and good quality library from my experience. It produces good a quality output and also can render POSTSCRIPT files with ease.



I have never had much look with the two libraries below and have only evaluated what can be achieved. Having never been able to produce a suitable output Apache PDFBox and PdfRenderer are not suitable for printing production documents.

Apache PDFBox (OSS) - Source link


PdfRenderer (OSS) - Source Link


In know way am I trying to promote or sell any of the above libraries, I know lots of hard work and hours have been spent designing and developing them. My aim is to simple speed up the process of evaluation for people. All examples from this post can be downloaded form my GitHub account here.

James