Mar 22
You can use preview in leopard not only in finder windows but on any document, folder, or file on the desktop. simply highlight the desired file and then press the space bar to view that file in preview mode.
Mar 17
When previewing images, hold alt and click on the picture to zoom in. then you can move the image around with the scroll ball or the cursor. to Zoom Out hold alt+shift and click.
Jan 25
I just took a picture with my built-in iSight. I then opened the file in Preview to do a quick, simple crop. This is when I noticed new options for the select functionality. I ended up doing the whole cropping in Preview - not bothering to launching Photoshop.
Using the Select - Extract shape you can very easily generate and edit a selection mask similar to photoshops colour select. Only the Preview implementation of it is much more intuitive and thus faster to work with.
Jan 17
I’m not sure if this is new in Leopard but I just discovered it. You can significantly shrink the size of PDF files using Preview.
To do this open the PDF in Preview. Select “Save As…” from the File menu. In the dialog that appears you will see a pop-up menu labelled “Quartz Filter”. Choose “Reduce File Size” and when you save the PDF it will be much smaller than the original.
There is some image quality loss so be sure to keep a copy of the original in case you aren’t happy with the results.
PDF documents can be a pain at times for people that need to work with other documents. If you are in need of a PDF to excel converter, you can find some of the best pdf converter software online. Whether you just need a pdf server or a converter for converting pdf’s to word documents you can find software online.
Jan 08
Not much of a trick, but I just wanted to call attention to all the functionality that the new Preview packs. It’s all there, in the help menu, in “What’s New in Preview”. Now with Preview there’s a great deal more PDF manipulation.
Let’s say you have a PDF document. With the sidebar open, you can now rearrange, delete pages, you can even drag pictures or other PDF documents from the desktop into the sidebar, move them around, and Preview will make them part of the original document. It’s great when creating or editing things on the fly. This definitely adds to the post about Preview’s Instant Alpha capabilities to clean up pictures.
Jan 02
This is really cool, I found it on a youtube video. You can place text on your images right in Leopard using Textedit and Preview. Here’s how:
Open Textedit, type a suitable label or string of text. Set the font as you desire (cmd+t), go to “File -> Print” and choose “Open PDF in Preview”.
Now using the “Select Tool” select the text (draw a box around it) and press (cmd+k) to crop. Save the cropped PDF as a PNG image (File -> Save As)
Now with the saved PNG image, hold the mouse button on the select tool until the drop down menu appears, and choose “Instant Alpha”. The image will now let you select the background portions to remove. Click on each white area until they are all grey and then press “Enter”. Now, “File -> Save As” a PNG again, this time you will notice the “Alpha” tickbox is checked. Overwrite the existing PNG file.
Now, with the saved image, press “cmd+a” to select all, then “cmd+c” to copy the item. Go across to your target image and press “cmd+v” to paste the text in. You can drag the text anywhere you like on the image!
Enjoy! * I took this picture whilst on holiday in Margaret River, Western Australia
Dec 13
In Tiger when I wanted to make icons of a folder I used a little script called ‘Icon Creator’. It didnt work anymore in Leopard. While experimenting I discovered a very fun and easy way to make icons in Leopard.
All you have to do is to open a jpeg (I believe any format that will open works) in PREVIEW.
Then (with the selection tool) you select the part of the picture you want as your icon. Now COPY it (press Comand + C)
Select a folder (or anything you want to change the icon of) and Right-click on this folder, bringing up the info pane. Go up to the top of the pane, click once on the icon to highlight it, and PASTE.
You now have your new icon.
Nov 08
Preview does more than just preview with some new features in Leopard.
You can manipulate images and documents with features such as colour adjustments, easy cropping, removing backgrounds or areas with the select tool and more.
You can merge PDF’s and use the more advanced annotation and notes features. Fire up Preview and see whats possible. Do you have any tricks for “Preview”?
