7 Ways To Quickly Preview Image Files On Your Mac

If you need to find an image in a folder full of photos or graphics, you have many different ways to do it in the Finder on a Mac.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can quickly preview images on your Mac. 
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Often I see people online asking how they can preview images that they have as files in the Finder on the Mac. I'm surprised I see this question so often because there are so many great ways to be able to do that on the Mac. So let's say I've got a folder here and it has a bunch of images in it. I want to find the one that I'm going to use in a project. Now in Icon View, like this, you can kind of see these little thumbnails and maybe able to pick out the image from that. But most of the time you want to see a larger preview. 
The simplest way to do this is to use QuickLook. So you can select an image and then press the Spacebar and you get this QuickLook window and you could see more detail in the image and then press Spacebar again to dismiss it. Now also notice that with this image selected I can use the arrow keys to move around in Icon View so I can move to the right, with the right arrow key, down with the down arrow key, up and to the left. If I were to press the Spacebar and bring up QuickLook I can use those same arrow keys because I'm still working here in the Finder. So if I go down now QuickLook is showing what is selected. I go to the left and see this image. Now it gets kind of confusing in Icon View because you just want to be able to flip through them all. But you need to be able to see what's going on here to navigate, right, left, up, and down. 
So it is much better to use either List View or Column View. Then you can select one image here, press Spacebar to bring up QuickLook, and then use the down arrow key to simply go down, up if you want to go back. Now you can resize this QuickLook window to make it smaller or bigger so you can see what it is you're doing. But any way you've got it, it's a really quick way to be able to preview the image that you want. When you find the one you want you Dismiss QuickLook by clicking the X here or just pressing Spacebar again. You're left with the right image selected. 
Now another way to do this is to use the Preview Pane. Now in Column View the Preview Pane is on by default and this is where you maybe used to seeing it. If you go to Column View you see columns here on the left and you see this large preview here on the right. But it may surprise you to find out you can use this Preview column in List View and Icon View as well. So in List View here I just go to View and then Show Preview or Shift Command P. Then it appears here. I can drag the line to make it larger or smaller. It's even there in Icon View once you turn it on. So you could see it for whatever image you've got selected. 
So in List View if you turn On  the Preview column you can go through all of your images. See this fairly large preview here to the right without having to bring up another window like in QuickLook. To turn it Off just go back to the same menu item or Shift Command P again. 
Another option that's interesting is to use the Inspector. So you probably know that you can select an image like this, do Command i and bring up the Info Window. That is in File, and then Get Info. But if you hold down the Option key and use Option Command i it's Show Inspector. The difference with the Inspector is that it stays there and hovers on top of everything. Whatever you select it going to show you the info for it. Now if you turn On the Preview section of the Inspector here you get a preview. So you can now preview things. Use the arrow keys to go up and down or select with the pointer. The advantage to this is that it is a little smaller than QuickLook by default and you can also bring up other things here. So if you want to bring up General Information, for instance, you can have both that and the Preview section open at the same time. 
Now we've looked at Icon View, List View, and Column View but the fourth view is Gallery View and that's made for previewing images. So switch to that and it shows you all the contents of your folder as a horizontal list at the bottom. Then a large preview here above that. In addition you get information to the right. So now I can move through all the images using the left and right arrow keys to find the one I want. Other than that it is a regular Finder view. I can double click on this to open it. Once I have the image I want selected I can switch back to one of the other views and that file stays selected. It is really quick to switch between these views, by the way, by going to View and you can see Command 1 through 4 are the views. So if you're in List View and you want to be able to Preview these images to find the right one just a quick Command 4 and now you're in Gallery View. You can use the left and right arrow keys, find the image that you want, a quick Command 2 and you go back to List View. 
Now you can also use QuickLook. But I already showed you QuickLook! Well, there is another way to use QuickLook to preview files. Here with just one selected if I use the spacebar to bring up QuickLook I continue with the up and down arrow keys to move between the Files. However, if I instead select a range of photos, so I'm going to select this first one, Shift Click to select this last one, so I know that the image in here. Then I press spacebar. Now I'm in QuickLook again but I've got these little left and right arrows at the top. I can use these to flip through just the images I've selected. The right and left arrow keys will do the same thing. So I can just go in the subset of images I've selected by using QuickLook like this. In addition I can even click this Index View here and then move around with the arrow keys and select one from that. 
Now, of course, you've got an app on your Mac called Preview. So you would think that is the primary way to preview an image. But, in fact, what you're doing when you double click an image or open it with Preview is you are opening up the image. You're no longer previewing it. You actually have it open in an app which kind of defeats the whole purpose of figuring out what image you want first before opening it. But Preview can come in handy in some cases. For instance, if I were to select a range of these and then use File, Open or Command O, they should all open in the default app which is Preview. Now you can see here I've got a list of them on the left and a nice big viewing area. I can use the down arrow keys to go through these. Now if you try to open them all and you get them in separate windows that means you need to change the Setting in Preview under Images to Open All Files in One Window. Now if you're using this method to be able to preview the images and now you want to go to the image you can Command Click on the name here and you could see how you can go up in the folder higharchy. Go up one level and then you could see it takes you in the Finder to that folder and that actual file is selected.
So I started off by showing you Icon View and said how these icons are pretty small. But you can actually make these icons larger. If you prefer Icon View and simply want to be able to look through a grid of photos then you can go to View, and then Show View Options or Command J. Here when you're in Icon View it looks like this and you have Icon size. You can simply increase the icon size to be able to see the images a little bit better. Now doing that may really make it hard to navigate around in this big window. But you could always go to View and then Clean Up By and then say Clean Up By Name and it is going to resort everything here so it is now wider than the actual window itself and you can scroll down and quickly find the image you want. 
Now, of course, these methods are about finding images in the Finder if they are files. If they are in your Photos App then you have a lot of options in Photos. For instance just the regular views have you viewing icons and you can increase the size or decrease the size or you could go into one and then use the arrow keys to keep flipping through all of your photos. So, if for some reason you're storing your own photos as files and you're not using the Photos App, well you may want to consider doing that because it makes it a lot easier to view, manage and maintain your photos' collection. 
So a couple extra notes. First, if you're using iCloud and you have an image like this one that isn't fully downloaded then as you flip through with QuickLook you'll see that image gets a much smaller thumbnail. But it looks a little bit better if you go to View, Show Preview and then you can see the thumbnail looks like that as opposed to a regular image that looks like that. So you get an indicator that it isn't currently cached on your Mac but you still can look through these images without much of a problem. 
Another thing to consider is you could still use QuickLook in conjunction with a lot of these other methods. So here if I'm using the Preview Column on the right and I get to an image and I want a closer look at it I can use the Spacebar to do that and the Spacebar to dismiss. It will be the same with using large icons in the Icon View or using the Inspector. You can still use QuickLook while you're using those other methods. 
So now that you have a bunch of different methods for previewing images on your Mac it is just a matter of figuring out which one works best for you. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “7 Ways To Quickly Preview Image Files On Your Mac”

Paul Schwotzer

7 months ago

A nice way to get a full-screen slideshow of photos in Finder:
1) Select a bunch of JPG files
2) Press opt-spacebar
Can then pause or use arrows to move around.

Ira Abramowitz

Is there a way to apply a Star Rating to photos without going into an application. I am particularly interested in this for iPad, where I’d like to rate my photos (downloaded from my camera) while on vacation, prior to developing these at home on my Mac, using DxO

Gary Rosenzweig

Ira: Not sure what you mean by "without going into an application." You are always using some app. Which app are you trying to avoid? On your iPhone in the Photos app you can add keyword tags, so you can have keyword tags for star ratings and apply them on your iPhone. Then those would sync with your Mac automatically via iCloud Photos.

Thanks. Specifically I wanted to do this in Finder, without the need to use a photo processing app just for this need. My photos are Fuji raw compressed and I just store them in a folder, not in the photos

Ira: But you specified the iPad. The Finder is Mac. So I'm not sure of your situation here. You can tag files in the Finder on a Mac, sure, so you can set up tags like "5 Star Photo" and such. You can do it in the Files app on the iPad too. But stars and tagging is a form of organization. So why not use the app (Photos) designed for organization? That's what it is for. Right tool for the job.

Column View works, but how can I expand the width of the column that has the photo (on the iPad). Thanks for your great ideas

Ira: On the iPad? It works differently there. I don't think there is a column width adjustment.

7 Ways To Quickly Preview Image Files On Your Mac

Comments: 7 Responses to “7 Ways To Quickly Preview Image Files On Your Mac”

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