Section 14.18. Preview

14.18. Preview

Preview began life as Mac OS X's built-in graphics viewerbut now, it's much more than that. It's the program you use to view incoming faxes as well as a nearly full-blown clone of Acrobat Reader (the free Adobe program that you used to read PDF files with).

In fact, because Preview now includes searching PDF documents, copying text out of them, adding comments, filling in forms, and clicking live hyperlinksfeatures that used to be available only in Acrobat Readeryou'd be silly to use Acrobat Reader at all .

14.18.1. Preview as Graphics Viewer

Preview's hallmark is its surprising versatility. It can display and manipulate pictures saved in a wide variety of formats, including common painting formats like JPEG, TIFF, PICT, and GIF (or even animated ones, since you can add a Play button to the toolbar, as described below); less commonly used formats like BMP, PNG, SGI, TGA, and MacPaint; and even Photoshop, EPS, and PDF graphics.

14.18.1.1. Cropping graphics

To crop graphics in Preview, chopping out unwanted sections, drag across the part of the graphic that you want to keep, and then choose Tools Crop ( -K).

If you don't think you'll ever need the original again, save the document. Otherwise, choose File Save As to spin the cropped image out as a separate file, preserving the original in the process.


Tip: You can also rotate an imageeven a PDF documentin 90-degree increments and then flip it vertically or horizontally, using the commands in the Tools menu.
14.18.1.2. Converting file formats

Preview doesn't just open all these file formatsit can also convert between most of them. You can pop open some old Windows BMP files and turn them into JPEGs for use on your Web site, and so on.


Tip: What's even cooler , you can open raw PostScript files right into Preview, which converts them into PDF files on the spot. You no longer need a PostScript laser printer to print out high-end diagrams and page layouts that come to you as PostScript files. Thanks to Preview, even an inkjet printer can handle them.

All you have to do is open the file you want to convert and choose File Save As. In the dialog box that appears, choose the new format for the image using the Format pop-up menu. Finally, click Save to export the file.

14.18.1.3. The Thumbnails drawer

The Thumbnails drawer slides out from the side of the main Preview window whenever (a) you open a multipage PDF or TIFF file, or (b) you highlight a bunch of graphics files in the Finder and open them all at once. (If your PDF file has been prepared with a table of contents, the drawer shows that.)

The idea is that these thumbnails (miniatures) let you navigate pages or graphics without having to open a rat's nest of individual windows. Figure 14-25 expands on the idea.

14.18.2. Preview as PDF Reader

Preview is a nearly full-blown equivalent of Acrobat Reader, the free program used by millions to read PDF documents. Here are the basics:

  • Zoom in and out using -plus and -minus.

  • Use the View PDF Display submenu to control how the PDF document appears: as two-page spreads , single scrolling sheets of paper towel, with borders that indicate ends of pages, and so on.

  • Use -up arrow and -down arrow to page through a document. (Page Up and Page Down aren't quite the same thing; they shift to the previous or next part of the same page, if it wasn't already visible.) You can use the up arrow and down arrow keys alone to walk through the miniature images in the Thumbnails drawer, or to scroll within the same page.

    Figure 14-25. To open or close the new Thumbnails drawer (right), click the Thumbnails icon at the left end of the toolbar. Incidentally, you can change the size of these miniatures by choosing Preview Preferences and adjusting the slider.


  • Bookmark your place by choosing Bookmarks Add Bookmark ( -D); now type a clever name. Thereafter, you'll be able to return to that spot by choosing its name from the Bookmarks menu.

  • Type in little notes as shown in Figure 14-26.


    Note: Once you save the document, you can't move or change the notes or ovals you've added. If being able to restore the original document is important to you, use the File Save As to spin out a copy of it before you annotate.
    Preferences and click the PDF tab. (Though antialiased text generally looks great, its sometimes easier to read very small type with antialiasing turned off. It's a little jaggy, but clearer nonetheless.)
  • Turn on View PDF Display Continuous to scroll through multipage PDF documents in one continuous stream, instead of jumping from page to page when you use the scroll bars.

  • To find a word or phrase somewhere in a PDF document, press -F (or choose Edit Find Find) to open the Find drawer. Proceed as shown in Figure 14-27.

    Figure 14-26. Click the Annotation tool on the toolbar. Drag diagonally to define a notes box; double-click inside, and then type! Click outside the box when you're finished. At this point, you can drag or delete the box. If you choose Oval Annotation from the Annotate Tool's pop-up menu, you can also circle something on the page, in red, to draw attention to it.


    Figure 14-27. Once the Find drawer is open (press -F), begin typing into the Find box (top right). Preview presents a list of matching phrases in the list as you type, exactly as in the Finder's search box. (The numbers next to the occurrences represent page numbers .) To jump to the spot on the actual page, click any of the "results."


  • If you want to copy some text out of a PDF documentfor pasting into a word processor, for example, where you can edit itclick the Text tool (the letter A on the toolbar) or choose Tools Text Tool. Now you can drag through some text and then choose Edit Copy, just as though the PDF document is a Web page. (You can even drag across page boundaries.)

  • Preview is now a mini-iPhoto, complete with color -correction tools. With a photo on the screen, choose Tools Image Correction. A passel of sliders appears (Saturation, Contrast, Exposure, and so on), for your image-tweaking pleasure .

  • You can export a single page from a PDF as a TIFF file, so that you can use it in other graphics, word processing, or page layout programssome of which might not directly support PDF.

    To extract a page, use the usual File Save As command, making sure to choose the new file format from the pop-up menu. (If you choose a format like Photoshop or JPEG, Preview only converts the current page. Thats because there's no such thing as a multipage Photoshop or JPEG graphic. But you already knew that.)

14.18.3. The toolbar

You can have hours of fun with Preview's toolbar. Exactly as with the Finder toolbar, you can customize it (by choosing View Customize Toolbaror by Option- -clicking the upper-right toolbar button), rearrange its icons (by -dragging them sideways ), and remove icons (by -dragging them downward).


Tip: Unhappy about the full inch of screen space consumed by the toolbar? No problem. Just -click the toolbar button (the white capsule in the upper-right corner). With each click, you cycle to the next toolbar style: large icons, small icons, no text labels, only text labels, and so on.


Switching to the Mac[c] The Missing Manual
Switching to the Mac[c] The Missing Manual
ISBN: 1449398537
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 371

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