Mac Preview is one of Apple’s best-kept secrets. Most people use it to view PDFs because its the default app for that, but very few know that Preview has tons of useful features to edit images, annotate PDFs, rearrange pages and more. Here are five Preview tricks that everyone should know.
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Jump to Any PDF Page
If you are viewing a one or two page document, then it’s easy to scroll down. But what if you need to jump to page 88 in a 230-page document? The good news is that Preview can easily allow you to do that. Click on the View button on the far left of the program’s toolbar, and from there you can choose Content Only to show the pages or Thumbnails to show you a thumbnail of each page. The View menu has other useful options, so make sure you try them all.
Delete and Rearrange Pages
If you ever need to delete a page in a PDF document or rearrange some pages, you can do it with Preview. All you need to do is go to the View menu and select the Thumbnails view. Then you’ll be able delete or rearrange pages the way you want by selecting thumbnails.
Sign a PDF
What do you do when you need to sign a PDF document? A lot of people print it out, sign it, and then scan it. But you don’t have to do this – there is an easier way. Open Preview and go to Preferences, then click on Signatures. Click on the plus sign to create a signature and a signature creation window will open. Then take a piece of white paper and sign it with a black pen. Hold out that paper in front of the camera and let Preview take a shot of it. Then save the signature and use it to sign any document anytime. It will be kept under Signatures preferences.
Add Text to PDFs
If you need to edit a PDF and add some text to it, that’s easy to do with Preview. Open your PDF and then click on the pen sign to open the editing toolbar. There click on the text menu entry, choose the text color and add text. If you want to change the font and its size, click on the big A icon and choose any font you like.
Edit Photos
Preview isn’t as powerful as Photoshop, but it works great for basic color adjustments and cropping. Just open a photo and click on the pen sign in the menu. To crop the image, use your mouse to select the area you want to crop around and click on the crop icon. And to edit the color scheme, click on the adjust color icon that’s located to the right of the crop icon. There are quite a few options there.
Now you can see how much you can do with Preview. There are a lot more options that you should check out, but these will make your life a lot easier without the need for extra software.