10 Tips - Preview the Mac app people forget about

Preview is that stand-alone program that comes with all Macs and one you probably don't pay too much attention to. That's understandable, it often feels just part of the operating system and not an application in its own right, but it is, and other than being a great viewing application for photos and PDFs, it comes with some nifty tools that I find myself using all the time and I thought I would share those with you.

Here they are:

1. Resizing images to a specific file size

2. Inverting Icons

3. Removing the background from an image

4. Rearranging pages in a PDF

5. Creating a new PDF from an existing one

6. Merging pages from one PDF to another

7. Signing PDFs

8. Removing Geolocation meta info from a photo

9. Creating an Image from the Clipboard

10. Accessing App icons

1. Resizing images to a specific file size

If you are like me and often find yourself having to upload images to websites, you can often be confronted with size restrictions to upload them. Preview has a great solutions to that.

Steps

1. Select 'Markup'

2. Select 'Resize'

3. Adjust width and height to meet size constraints

2. Inverting Icons

Have a black and white image but you want to inverted? it You can use the image editing capabilities of Preview to do this.

Steps

1. Select 'Tools' from the toolbar

2. Select 'Adjust Color'

3. Drag and invert the Left and Right arrows of the levels window

3. Removing the background from an image

Does your image have a background that is making your presentation look rather amateur? Get rid of it in Preview.

Steps

1. Select 'Markup'

2. Select 'Auto Alpha'

3. Click and drag down to select the desired background

4. Press delete on the keyboard

5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 if necessary

4. Rearranging pages in a PDF

Preview is a great stand-alone PDF viewer and it has some extra capabilities like being able to rearrange the pages of a document.

Steps

1. Select the desired pages to reorder in the sidebar

2. Drag and drop the pages to the desired location

5. Creating a new PDF from an existing one

If you ever need to split up a pdf or just take out a few pages to form a new one. Preview is extremely useful for this.

Steps

1. Select the desired pages from the sidebar

2. Drag and drop the pages onto the desktop or a location of your choosing

6. Merging pages from one PDF to another

Have more than one PDF that you want to combine? A simple drag and drop can save you a lot of headaches here

Steps

1. Open both PDFs and have them next to each other

2. Select the desired pages from one PDF's sidebar

3. Drag and drop those pages to the other PDF's sidebar

7. Signing PDFs

Signing documents is something we all have to do from time to time. Preview enables you to sign documents without having to print them out and scan them back in.

Steps

1. Select 'Markup'

2. Select 'Signature'

3. Either create a new signature or select an existing one

4. Drag and resize the signature to suit

8. Removing Geolocation meta info from a photo

If you post a lot of photos on the web, you could be exposing the location of where you took that photo. Something that some not so nice people might try to capitalise on. Best get rid of it in Preview first.

Steps

1. Select 'Information'

2. Select 'Information' from the more info dialogue box

3. Select the GPS tab

4. Click 'Remove Location Info'

9. Creating an Image from the Clipboard

Copied a photo from a website and want to save it. Preview can help

Steps

1. Copy Desired image

2. Open Preview

3. Select 'File' from the toolbar

4. Select 'New from Clipboard'

10. Accessing App icons

If you create content for different applications you may find yourself in need of an image of the app's icon. Rather than getting a bad quality one from the web use Preview to do it for you.

Steps

1. Open your 'Applications' folder

2. Select the desired app

3. Right Click and choose 'Get Info' or CMD + I

4. Select the icon in the top left of the dialogue box

5. Copy it using the keyboard shortcut CMD + C

6. Open Preview

7. Select 'File' from the toolbar

8. Select 'New from Clipboard'