Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Preview

Preview began life as Mac OS X’s built-in graphics viewer—but in Panther, it’s much more than that. It’s now the program you use to view incoming faxes ( Chapter 13), as well as a nearly full-blown clone of Acrobat Reader (the free Adobe program that you use to read PDF files).

In fact, because Preview now includes searching PDF documents, copying text out of them, and clicking live hyperlinks in them—features that used to be available only in Acrobat Reader—Apple doesn’t even include Acrobat Reader with Mac OS X. Preview, the company feels, is ready to take over all PDF-reading tasks. (Among other benefits, Preview is a lot faster than Acrobat Reader.)

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 (even animated ones; 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.

Cropping graphics

For the first time in Panther, you can crop graphics in Preview, chopping out unwanted sections. To do that, choose Tools→Select Tool (or click the dotted-rectangle tool on the toolbar). Drag across the part of the graphic that you want to keep, and then choose Tools→Crop Image (-K).

If you don’t think you’ll ...