Apple enabled limited iPad printing with the introduction of AirPrint in iOS 4.2. But if you’re not lucky enough to have an AirPrint-supported printer, or if you want print capabilities beyond those supported by Apple, what are you to do? One possibility is PrintCentral Pro from EuroSmartz, an app that takes a kitchen sink approach to printing, with various degrees of success.

EuroSmartz says that PrintCentral Pro should work with “most existing Wi-Fi or shared printers,” but is otherwise vague about what printers actually work. For those that don’t work right away, the company offers WePrint, a free print server you can install on a host Mac connected to the same network as the printer. I wasn’t able to get any intelligible output to my Brother Wi-Fi printer until I installed WePrint on my MacBook, and a perusal of feedback on the App Store reveals that many other customers saw similar results.

Printing web pages from Mobile Safari works really well.

You can use PrintCentral Pro to intercept print jobs with the iOS Mail app: select an email attachment and use the “Open in” command to send it to PrintCentral Pro for print output. I was able to successfully open Microsoft Office and Apple iWork file attachments and print them out.

When I say “kitchen sink approach,” I mean it—PrintCentral Pro is designed to do a little bit of everything. It has the ability to connect to email accounts directly; access cloud-based services like WebDAV servers, iDisk, Google Docs, and Dropbox; view your contacts database and your calendars; print photos; and view Web pages. You can also save Web pages as PDFs and convert other applications’ files into PDF, provided those apps supports the “Open in” command. What’s more, a built-in file server enables you to “mount” your iOS device as a network disk (using an IP address) so you can drag and drop documents straight from your Mac or PC to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

The Settings screen shows both the app’s flexibility, and its cumbersome interface.

However, PrintCentral Pro does all this using an overly cumbersome and awkward interface that, while functional, isn’t pretty or elegant in the slightest, and can be downright frustrating and confusing. EuroSmartz packed a huge amount of customization and tweaking functionality into the app, but unfortunately sacrificed usability and elegance in the process.

PrintCentral Pro has built-in help, but like the rest of the app, its interface hasn’t been very well thought through. The Help screen is essentially a very long FAQ with collapsed questions; clicking on one gives you a list of instructions, many of which consist of a number of steps you’ll have to remember.

PrintCentral Pro can interface with a variety of cloud services.

Worst of all, PrintCentral Pro comes as separate apps for iPhone and iPad—it’s $8.99 for iPhone and another $9.99 for the iPad version, instead of being one universal app.

The bottom line. PrintCentral Pro lets you print documents from your iOS device by hook or by crook, although it may require you to install additional (free) software on your Mac to get you there. But its cumbersome, overly complicated interface doesn’t feel very iOS-like. EuroSmartz should really start over with a clean sheet, and see if they can come up with a more elegant solution.