3/8/24
9:00 am

21 Things You Can Do With Images In Preview

A lot of common tasks you need to do with images can be done with the Mac's built-in Preview app. Learn how to crop, resize, compress, convert, caption and much more.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at what you an do with images in Preview.
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So Preview is an app that's built into MacOS. It can allow you to view PDF files and images. You can also do certain things with those types of files. Unless you've changed it the default app for handling images files should be Preview. So if you have an image file like this one in the Finder and double-click it it should open up the Preview App and show you the image. 
Now the first thing I want to show you that you can do with it is you can get info about the image. You can click the i button here or you can go to Tools and then Show Inspector. This brings up this little window here and you can see information about the file. So, for instance, you can see what type of image it is. In this case a HEIF image. You can see its size and you can see the image size here. But there is also a lot of other information that you can see about the image that you can't normally see in the Finder. For instance if you click the Information button here at the top for more info and then you go to the second part right here, the EXIF part, you can see all the Metadata for this image assuming it is a photo. So this is the data that the camera puts into the image. For instance you actually get the time that the photo was taken which may be different than the actual File Creation Date because the photo was actually retained inside the file. So you can have a new file that contains a photo that was taken awhile ago. So if you're looking for the date that the photo was taken this is one way to find it without having to import it into an app like Photos. You can also see a ton of other information here about the photo and camera settings for when the photo was taken. 
You can also get location information. So if this image has GPS information in it you can go to the GPS tab right here and then you could see the exact location of the photo even including the altitude and a map. 
Now as far as manipulating the image Preview is not an image editor like PhotoShop or Pixelmator Pro. But there are select set of things that you can do. So, for instance, let's say you want to Crop a photo. You can do that easily inside of Preview. All you need to do is click and drag a box around the area you want to crop. You can use these blue dots here to adjust any of the sides or corners. Then you can go to Tools and notice that there's the Crop feature here. This is only active if you've actually selected an area. So you can now select this or just use Command K as a shortcut and now you've cropped the photo. Just like working in any app where you're editing a document you can always use Command Z to Undo the last change. 
Now you can also rotate the image if it is taken in the wrong orientation for instance. If you do that with this button here which will rotate it to the left. You can also go to Tools and there you're going to see Rotate Left and Rotate Right with keyboard shortcuts. 
You can also Flip an image. So sometimes you want to do that for a visual effect. Sometimes you may want to do that because maybe the image is already flipped, like it is a screenshot taken during a video conference and everything is mirrored. So now you can do Flip Horizontal, flip it that way, or Flip Vertical, if you need to flip it that way. 
You can also Resize an image. One of the main reasons to resize an image is that the file size could be way too big. So notice here that this isn't too bad, it's 1.8MB. But if I were to go and go to Tools and then adjust the size I can resize it. You can see this is 4000 pixels across. So say I don't need it to be that big. I can, maybe, adjust it to a 1000 pixels across. It will automatically adjust the height as long as you've got it locked right here and set to Scale Proportionally and Resample Image. You can get an estimate here showing this is now going to go to 100K, quite a bit smaller than 1.8MB. 
You can also adjust the colors here. So you can go to Tools and Adjust Color and then this brings up this special control panel here. You can use Auto to automatically adjust things or you can manually drag these to adjust things like the exposure, contrast, and so on. You don't have as many controls as you do in Photos and certainly not as many as you would an app like PhotoShop. But you can do some  basic things using the tools right here. 
Now you can also change Format. For instance this is a HEIC file here and maybe you need to send it to somebody who has an older computer that doesn't have the ability to view this newer format. So you can go to File and then Export. Then from the Export window here you can choose from a variety of Formats. So you can go to a standard jpeg format, for instance, or png. 
Now you can also use this to compress an image further. If you're using a compression format like jpeg you can actually reduce the quality and then see the results in file size. So this is keeping the size of the image the same, it's still going to be 4000 pixels across. But I've compressed it greatly making a much small file with a sacrifice in quality. 
Now it can also identify objects such as animal and plants. This is an operating system thing and you can do it in a variety of places like QuickLook and Photos and you can do it here in Preview. If you look at the information button here, if you see these little sparkles to the top left, that means when you click it not only will you get the info here but it may identify an object in the photo and then you can click on that little icon there and you can see a description and get more information about that particular object. For instance here's a photo and you can see it has more information there, if I click there, it has identified a location. If I click that you can see more information about this building.
Another thing you can do, that's kind of different than cropping, is say you want to just have a portion of an image and you want to include that in an email. You don't actually have to change the image or duplicate it and change it. You can just select a portion like that and use Command C or Edit Copy. Then you can be in another app, say Mail, and you can Paste it in. You can see it has pasted in the selection that I copied, not the entire image. 
But you can also try to remove the background. As long as there is the subject in the photo, in this case there is, there is a way to remove a subject that works in many different macOS apps including in Preview. So if I Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, you can see I get Copy Subject only if it can identify as subject in the photo. I can select Copy Subject and you can see now if I were to Paste that I just get the subject not the entire image. It removes the background. 
Likewise I could do the opposite of that but it is using the same technology. Like if I go to Tools and then Remove Background it will actually take out the background from the photo and then I can save it and it would save without the background.
You can also use a built-in macOS function in Preview to Copy Text. So, for instance here's an image with text and I can select some of the text. This is an image here. These are pixels not actual text that you would get in a pdf. So it is actually identifying that there is text there and translating it to actual text. Now that I've selected it, if I do Command C for Copy I can now go into another app and Command V for Paste.
It can also identify things like phone numbers and addresses and even URLs and you can see if I were to look at this one it cannot only Copy it but I could Click on it and it would take me to the website or click this little button to the right here and open a Link or do a QuickLook of the link. 
Of course you also have Markup Tools in Preview which means you can draw on an image and you can literally do that. This is the button here to take you to Markup Tools. Then you get this extra toolbar here with things like the ability to draw, I can click on that and then I can use this pen and draw here. 
But you can also add Shapes. So, for instance I can do an Arrow here and have this arrow point to something and change things about the arrow and change the color of the arrow. There's a lot of different things you can do. A whole variety of different shapes. 
You can use this to actually draw a border. I know this is a thing a lot of people want to do. You can do a rectangle like this. When you draw the rectangle make sure you've got the Fill set to Nothing. If it is set to a color then it will blank out whatever is below it. But if you set it to Nothing then it actually will allow you to draw a border by simply placing the rectangle around the edges of the photo. 
You can also use the Textbox here to draw captions. So this puts a little bit of text here. I can select the text in here, click here to actually increase the size, let's change the color so it is more viewable. Then I can move this text and place it wherever I want. You can have multiple pieces of text placed throughout the image. 
Another thing you're going to see here in Markup Tools in Preview is this item here which is fairly new. It is Image Description. Here you can type the description of what's in the photo. This is for people with visual impairments who can't actually see the photo. So if I were to add in a description here and send it to them in an email, assuming they were email client supports descriptions for images, it can actually read out the description of the image from what you typed right in here. This is particularly important for those who want to make sure their communications are as accessible to everybody as possible. 
Now sometimes we just want to view an image and get a closer look at something. You can use the Plus and Minus buttons here at the top or go to View and you've got Zoom In and Zoom Out, the keyboard shortcuts. So I can zoom in and continue to use Command Plus to zoom in. I can move around and just using my trackpad or you can use the top of Magic Mouse to move around and then you can even use the trackpad pinching out to zoom in like that. So that's one way to zoom in here. You can also go to Tools and Show Magnifier. This brings up little magnifier where the pointer should be. So you can look at a particular item there and you can, on a trackpad, zoom in and out using two-fingers. 
There's actually a third was to do this using Markup Tools to make it a permanent part of the image if you go to the Shapes here. You've got this Loop Tool here and you could position this where you want and you can increase its size or increase its magnification with the blue and green dots here. Now when I would save this, this would become a permanent part of the image.
You can also combine a bunch of images into a pdf document. This is handy if you want to send somebody a pdf that contains, basically a set of images. The way to do this is first you need to go into Preview here and then into Settings. Make sure under Images that When Opening Files they All Open in One Window. Like that. So now if I were to go and select a bunch of images, like these four here, and use Command O to open them, see how it opens them all here and they are in the left sidebar. Now I could go and select all of these. I'm going to Shift Click to select them all. Now I've got these all selected I can go to File and then Print. Then you can see it is going to try to Print all of these together, all four documents. So now I could do various things to them. Like say change the orientation if I wanted to and switch auto-rotate On and Off. Scale them. Whatever I want and then I could click on the pdf button here and it is going to create a pdf. I'll stick it here on the Desktop. If I open up that pdf you could see it has got all four images wrapped up in a pdf. 
Another thing you could do with a bunch of images you have open in Preview is you can present Slideshow. So if you go to the View Menu notice Slideshow here near the bottom. Select that. It goes full screen and you'll see this slideshow. You can go back and forth between the different items or click the Play button and then it will go from one image into the next with a little bit of a fade right there.  Click this little X button or hit Escape and it will exit the slideshow.
So there is an overview of all the different things that you can do with images in Preview. Of course you can do a lot more with an app like PhotoShop or Pxielmator Pro, but these functions cover a wide variety of things people need to do without having to go to a third party app. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 19 Responses to “21 Things You Can Do With Images In Preview”

Keith Hill

9 months ago

Thanks so much Gary for an in depth review of Preview. I never really knew so much could be done here, so Thanks Again.

Keith

Cheryl Fleming

9 months ago

Very helpful video. Thanks so much, Gary!

Sheldon

9 months ago

Thanks bunches

Mike Cox

9 months ago

Thanks Gary, for such an in depth review. I use Preview frequently, however I learned some new (for me) things it will do...THANKS!

Lindy

9 months ago

Great tips on Preview.... I use it everyday!
One of the problems I have is : when I want to select part of the image it tries to select text. And alternately when I don't want to select text.... that's all it want to select. Is there a way to avoid these issues? I really love the new features of Preview but the above issues frustrate me. Thanks for all you do for the Mac community. 👍💖

Gary Rosenzweig

9 months ago

Lindy: To force pixel selection, turn on the Markup tools, and choose the rectangle selection tool.

Lindy

9 months ago

Ahhhh. OK, thanks. I've just been diving right in and assuming it should read my mind by where I place my cursor. 😂🤣

Paul Ramikie

9 months ago

I am so grateful, Gary, for this info since I thought we could do more with the preview software. Thanks a Lot.

Bill Ware

9 months ago

The Crop Inspector is missing in Preview.app 11.0

Gary Rosenzweig

9 months ago

Bill: This video is made with Preview 11.0. Make sure you have an image open (not a PDF) and made sure you have made a selection with the Markup selection tool.

Mike

9 months ago

Thanks Gary.

Michael

9 months ago

Thanks, Gary. Very helpful, as always. Nice idea to save some sets of photos in PDF format.

Wm Seabrook

9 months ago

There is a problem with Preview on Sonoma I encountered. If you are dealing with a black and white or grey scale image, after manipulation, Preview will not save the image.

The document “1492.tiff” could not be autosaved.

Your changes will not be saved until the problem is resolved. You can also duplicate the document or discard your changes to close it.

Jeff Pankin

9 months ago

Gary thanks so much for another informative video! I do a lot with photos and having an easy way to get the real Created date from the EXIF data is wonderful. Your explanation of the photo being contained in a file was very helpful for understanding what happens when I move photos around.

George

9 months ago

That's wonderful Preview information. Now, is there a way to de-skew an image in Preview? I'm able to do it in Photos on my iPhone, but not in Preview.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 months ago

George: No, not in Preview. You can do it in Photos on your Mac too.

Dave Gustafson

9 months ago

I have a small art business and have to email photos to clients. Is there a way to add say 4 photos in one screen of a pdf?

Thanks again. Sometimes I watch your videos 3 and 4 times because they are so thick with information.
Great stuff

Gary Rosenzweig

9 months ago

Dave: Lots of ways to do that. First, if you have the photos in the Photos app, then a Contact Sheet is an option in the Print dialog. That's your easiest and best option. But if the photos aren't in Photos, then you can open them all in Preview, Print, and then go to Layout and choose "Pages Per Sheet." Or, for more control, you can just create a new document in Pages, use Page Layout mode, and drag and drop the 4 images there as you like. You can arrange them, add borders, text boxes, etc.

Suzanne Aubrey

8 months ago

Thank you!!! I was a Mac user years ago, and am finally back! So much to learn. Your videos are wonderful. Concise, easy to listen to and view. Definitely not boring.

21 Things You Can Do With Images In Preview

Comments: 19 Responses to “21 Things You Can Do With Images In Preview”

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