Preview (Mac OS)

Preview

Preview 4.0 running under Mac OS X 10.5.0
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Stable release	6.0.1 / September 19, 2012 (2012-09-19)
Operating system	OS X
Type	Image viewer
License	Proprietary

Preview is Mac OS X's application for displaying images and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. Like Mac OS X itself, it comes from NeXT's NeXTSTEP operating system.

Preview employs Apple's implementation of Adobe's PDF specification, and makes significant use of Apple's Aqua graphical user interface, the Quartz graphics layer, and the ImageIO and CoreImage frameworks

Supported file types

Preview can open the following file types:

AI - Adobe Illustrator Artwork files BMP – Windows Bitmap files DNG – Digital Negative files DAE - Collada 3D files EPS – Encapsulated PostScript files (after an automatic conversion to PDF) FAX – faxes FPX – FlashPix files GIF – Graphics Interchange Format files HDR – High Dynamic Range Image files ICNS – Apple Icon Image files ICO – Windows icon files JPEG 2000 – JPEG 2000 files JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group files OpenEXR – OpenEXR files

PS – Adobe PostScript files (after an automatic conversion to PDF) PSD – Adobe Photoshop files PICT – QuickDraw image files PDF – Portable Document Format files PNG – Portable Network Graphics files PNTG – MacPaint Bitmap Graphic files QTIF – QuickTime image files RAD – Radiance Scene Description files RAW – Raw image files SGI – Silicon Graphics Image files TGA – TARGA image files TIF, TIFF – Tagged Image File Format files XBM – X BitMap files PPT – PowerPoint files

The version of Preview included with OS X 10.3 could loop animated GIFs via an optional "play" button that could be added to the toolbar. With OS X 10.4, Preview lost playback functionality and animated GIFs would instead display as individual frames in a numbered sequence.

Features

Editing features

Preview offers basic image correction tools using Core Image processing technology implemented in Mac OS X, and other features like shape extraction, color extraction, cropping, and rotation tools. Also, some features which are otherwise only available in professional PDF editing software are provided by Preview: It is possible to extract single pages out of multi-page documents (e.g. PDF files), sort pages, and drag & drop single or multiple pages between several opened multi-page documents, or into other applications, such as attaching to an opened email message.

Preview can also encrypt PDF documents, and restrict their use; for example, it is possible to save an encrypted PDF so that a password is required to copy data from the document, or to print it. However, encrypted PDFs cannot be edited further, so the original author should always keep an unencrypted version.

PDF and TIFF documents can also be annotated and supplied with keywords, and are then automatically indexed using OS X's system-wide Spotlight search engine.

OCR PDF document creation —usually from scanned physical documents— in order to make their text searchable, is not available with Preview. Though sometimes the scanner or all-in-one printer used to obtain the document image often has some manufacturer software to do this.

Some aspects of the Adobe Reader's functionality introduced in more recent releases (from Reader v4.0 onwards) are not supported in Preview yet. For example, forms can now be created in Adobe Acrobat that have dynamic content fields such as drop-downs and check-boxes. Preview will display these fields as static images without interactivity.^{[citation needed]}

Preview is known to cause corruption when PDF forms are completed and saved from Preview as of version 5.0.3. A Javascript to fix this issue is available on the Adobe website - http://kb2.adobe.com/community/publishing/885/cpsid_88564.html

Import and export

Preview can directly access image scanners supported by OS X and import images from the scanner. Preview can convert between image formats; it can export to BMP, JP2, JPEG, PDF, PICT, PNG, SGI, TGA, and TIFF. Using OS X's print engine (based on CUPS) it is also possible to "print into" a Postscript file, a PDF-X file or directly save the file in iPhoto, for example scanned photos.

Beginning with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Preview restricts the Format option popup menu in the Save As dialog to commonly used types. It is possible to access the full format list by holding down the Option key when clicking the Format popup menu. (GIF, ICNS, JPEG, JPEG-2000, Microsoft BMP, Microsoft Icon, OpenEXR, PDF, Photoshop, PNG, SGI, TGA, TIFF)

See also

• List of PDF software

External links

• Apple - Mac OS X - PDF
• AppleInsider review from 2003
• MacProNews article: PDF and Panther: The Hidden Role of PDF in Mac OS X 10.3 from July 2004
• Sams Publishing sample chapter on Preview from Mac OS X Panther Applications and Utilities. Includes some instructions for use, with screenshots.