Preview is one of the many useful apps included in Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. If you think of Preview as just a PDF viewer, you would be missing out on a ton of useful things Preview can do. These include:
- Add, move and delete pages in a PDF document.
- Edit images to adjust color and exposure.
- Rotate images and PDF documents.
- Fill in a PDF form.
- Sign a PDF document.
- Select and copy text in a PDF document.
- Covert an image from one file type to another.
- Highlight and annotate text in PDF documents.
- Draw lines and shapes on images.
- View a group of images as a slideshow.
With Mountain Lion, Preview got a few new goodies too. You can now scan a page directly into an existing PDF document for one thing. As a die-hard highlighter who’s always highlighting and adding notes to documents, I love the new Notes & Highlights sidebar. It not only lists the things I’ve highlighted and notes I’ve added, I just tap on an item in the sidebar and Preview takes me to that point in the document.
Preview with the Notes & Highlights sidebar displayed.
This version of Preview fully supports iCloud and can share PDF documents via Messages, Mail and AirDrop or images via Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. The thumbnail sidebar is still going strong, and now you also have a table of contents sidebar available if the document has been created to support it. How do you do that? By building your original document using styles to identify headings as such. [See All About Styles for more information. ]
A PDF document showing the table of contents sidebar and annotated text.
Most Mac users pay little attention to Preview, but its capabilities do justify spending a bit more time getting acquainted with its many features. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover how useful it can be.
