Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’s Preview 3.0 application lets you read PDF documents, view images, and, now, take screenshots using features previously available in the Grab application. Preview, familiar to Mac OS X users, lets you view several types of image files, including JPG, GIF, HDR, TIF, PSD, PICT, PNG, BMP, and SGI. You can rotate, resize, and crop images, and you can convert them to different file types. In addition to viewing Portable Document Format (PDF) files, you can search them, annotate them, bookmark them, and fill them out (if they are PDF forms). And when you open a PostScript (PS) or EPS file, Preview converts it to a PDF. In PDF documents, you can highlight important sections, add your own comments, bookmark pages, and fill out forms.
One nice feature in Tiger’s Preview 3.0 is its ability to take screen shots and edit them directly. You can use Preview to take a picture of all or part of your computer screen, and then edit the picture. These pictures are often called “screen shots” or “screen captures.” You can even view elegant full screen slideshow of images opened in Preview! Choose View > Slideshow.
You can take a picture of a pull-down or pop-up menu with Preview. Choose File > Grab > Timed Screen. Press the mouse button to open the menu you want to capture, and keep the mouse button pressed until the Timed Screen Grab dialog closes and the picture appears. Preview captures the menu within 10 seconds. A new window appears with the image of the captured menu.
You can take a picture of a window using Preview. Choose File > Grab > Window. Click the window you want to capture. Preview captures the window within a few seconds. A new window appears with the image of the window.
You can take a picture, or “screen shot,” of your entire screen. Choose File > Grab > Timed Screen. After a few seconds, Preview captures the screen. A new window appears with an image of your entire screen. If you don’t need a picture of your entire screen, you can capture just part of the screen. Choose File > Grab > Selection. Move the pointer to a corner of the area you want to capture. Drag the pointer across the area and release the mouse button. Preview captures the part you selected within a few seconds. A new window appears with the image of the selected area.
The screenshot images are in TIF format, saved to the Desktop, and are named with the word “Snapshot” and the date and time you snapped the shot. For example, a screenshot taken on April 30, 2005 at 10:24:36pm would be named “Snapshot 2005-04-30 22-24-36.tiff”
Working with PDF documents has never been easier than with Preview 3.0. You can bookmark a page in a PDF document so you can quickly return to it, much like a web browser’s bookmarks. To add a bookmark, choose Bookmarks > Add Bookmark, and enter a name. To rename a bookmark, choose Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks, and double-click its name. To delete a bookmark, choose Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks, select it, and click Remove. To go to a bookmark, choose its name from the Bookmarks menu. The bookmarks are not saved with the document. When you give the document to others, they won’t see them.
Preview lets you fill out a PDF form. You can then print it or fax it to someone. Whatever you enter is saved with the document and can be seen by anyone who reads it. However, after you save the document, you can no longer edit any of its fields. Before filling out a form, you may want to create a copy of it, so you can go back to the original. And before saving the form, be sure it’s filled out completely and correctly. To fill out a PDF form: Choose Tools > Text Tool. Click a field on the form. When you click in a field, that field is highlighted in blue to show that you can enter text. If the field isn’t highlighted, this is not a form you can fill out.
Mac OS X Tiger’s Preview 3.0 is a valuable application. Take some time and explore the many new things Preview offers. You might find that you’ll never launch Adobe’s Acrobat Reader again.
Find out more about Preview 3.0 here.
Tiger was installed today on a 12 inch 1.33ghz PowerBook.
No problems… nada.
During installation, we used the archive option – which also got rid of the final remains of Norton anti-virus & firewall. Uninstalling Norton had previously been impossible.
Only concern…. PGP 8.3 does NOT work with Tiger, so we have to wait a week or so for 9.0 to become available.
Other than that… a breeze…. and we LOVE spotlight big time.
This is great. These new features some how got by me. Preview is becoming more and more usefull.
These Preview additions sound great. I use screen capturing and PDF stuff nearly every week. I look forward to trying it.
Yea, the Grab option is !@#$% ing fantastic.
I just cut and pasted a few dozen images, and closed the window, fully expecting it to ask me to save the pictures (so I could just press enter on each one, rather than select/save)… oh no, unlike just about every other Apple app (except Safari) it doesn’t give you the option to save – it just closes the window.
!@#$% ing briliant!
ENJOY!
Ok, I was wrong, it saves the grabbed images to the desktop.
Phew!!
This is great (but not really obvious first time round.)
This is a cool feature. I’ve been trying to figure out the easiest way to print the notated music from Garage Band 2.0. I was trying Grab, but it wasn’t that easy to do. Now I can save the window, and take it in chunks to another doc.
Maybe GB 3.0 (or 2.1) will have the ability to output the notated music???
What’s the point of having the notation feature in GarageBand, if you aren’t able to export/print it out easily? Yeah, it looks cool, but the utility of being able to see the actual notes is lost without being able to print it.
Is this tied somehow with the Apple Corps case? Would providing the ability to print sheet music from GarageBand make Apple Computer a ‘music publishing’ operation, ostensibly the purview of a bunch of creaky old men and their widows, none of which has released any new material under the Apple Corps banner since the first Apple I was sold at the Homebrew meetings???
Okay, rant is over. Everyone can get back to talking about how great 10.4 is now…
“Is this tied somehow with the Apple Corps case? Would providing the ability to print sheet music from GarageBand make Apple Computer a ‘music publishing’ operation,…???”
Obviously not, since Apple makes at least two applications (Logic Pro and Express) that are able to print sheet music.
“What’s the point of having the notation feature in GarageBand, if you aren’t able to export/print it out easily? Yeah, it looks cool, but the utility of being able to see the actual notes is lost without being able to print it.”
The point is being able to edit it on the musical staff. GarageBand 2 costs 79.00 (if you don’t count the other programs that come on the iLife disk with it) or it comes free with a new Mac. Go price Finale and maybe you’ll realize what an incredible deal GarageBand and the other iLife programs are.
AppleGuy
This Tiger is the best thing that has happened to Computers
since the internet. Tiger roars–I dont taut Apple but this Tiger
is really grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!!!! Im so taken aback that Im not
even able to describe it except to say that if really lets fulfills
the promise of home computing and the internet. Not to mention
that its really cool.
Preview can now annotate, excellent. Spotlight is a godsend, using it to peruse through my 250 GB hard drive in a fraction of the time. Tiger is better than drugs.
lisa: “…if really lets fulfills
the promise of home computing and the internet.”
So you couldn´t do home computing and the internet before Tiger? Hmmmmm….what have zillions of Mac and PC people been doing with their computers before Tiger?
Yeah, the new Preview is much better, but the search function from within preview is still lacking. I do a search in spotlight that finds the item within the PDF. I open the PDF in Preview and do a search to find the term and guess what? No hits! If the same PDF is searched from within Acrobat then it finds the terms no problem. I really don’t get it. Why not have spotlight do the same search from within the App?
I just finnished installing Tiger on a Imac G5 1.6 with 512 meg ram and it smokes. The computer feels 20-30�ster. The finder is really fast now, And all my big apps, adobe macromedia cubase, run quicker. All Hail The Tiger. I love my mac and I love My tiger.
Preview in Tiger is the worst “update” I’ve seen in any version of Mac OS X. Here’s why:
• The option to play animated GIFs has been removed. The Play button is no longer in the toolbar customization set.
• PDF rendering feels about half the speed it was with Panther.
• In Panther there was a general option to make viewing PDFs continuous, so you could drag from the start of the document to the end without clicking a next page button. In Tiger, it appears to be a per-document setting. This is Bad. It was in the prefs in Panther; why not in Tiger?
• Now, you can only get the drag option (the little hand which you use to move around a document that’s bigger than your screen) if you’re viewing a PDF, but you used to be able to do it with any image. On a 1024×768 screen, the lack of this option for jpegs, pngs, tiffs etc is almost criminal.
While the additions are nice, the way they’ve removed these features is beyond comprehension. With this, Preview’s now half the app it used to be for me – and that is no exaggeration.
MW = idea, as in “I have no idea why Apple didn’t wait until Tiger was properly finished and tested until they released it”.
To Mike –
“• The option to play animated GIFs has been removed. The Play button is no longer in the toolbar customization set.”
I think Apple wanted to use Preview for stills, and QuickTime Player for movies. It makes more sense. If you drop that same GIF into QuickTime Player, it will play. I’m surprised actually that they allowed Preview to do that in the first place. If it’s too much to drag the GIF onto the QuickTime Player icon each time, use the Finder to change all GIFs to open with QT Player.
“• PDF rendering feels about half the speed it was with Panther. “
This is subjective, as I haven’t noticed any slowdowns at all.
“• In Panther there was a general option to make viewing PDFs continuous, so you could drag from the start of the document to the end without clicking a next page button. In Tiger, it appears to be a per-document setting. This is Bad. It was in the prefs in Panther; why not in Tiger?”
It is not a per-document setting, once I set it in one document, it stayed that way for all the other documents I opened.
“• Now, you can only get the drag option (the little hand which you use to move around a document that’s bigger than your screen) if you’re viewing a PDF, but you used to be able to do it with any image. On a 1024×768 screen, the lack of this option for jpegs, pngs, tiffs etc is almost criminal.”
The option is still there. If you hold down the space bar, your icon turns into a hand, and you can move around inside any document that Preview opens. They made it work the same way as it does is Photoshop.
Hopefully this makes you feel a little better about the new version of Preview.
i don’t like that they took some of the editing tools off the menu in Preview, e.g., the crop tool. i used it a ton. now i have to go to the menu. and you can’t add any editing tools in the ‘customize toolbar’ menu. they’re not there.
Safari also now views PDFs inline – so if its a PDF you just want to check out ral fast from onine, you can do so without littering your desktop with a bunch of pdf files.
I rule. And you’re welcome.