LeVitus: Leopard's Preview is a Superstar

by , 2:10 PM EDT, April 16th, 2008

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus briefly recapped the development of the Portable Document Format (PDF) and how new features in the Leopard version of Preview work with that format in his column at the Houston Chronicle.

Mr. LeVitus pointed out how one can customize the Toolbar (from the View menu) and add Annotate and Mark Up icons. The annotation tools, are fantastic for editing text. Also, overlooked is the ability to use Preview to screen capture a window or selection (from the File menu: Grab)

The sidebar, whose icon can be added to the Toolbar with Customize, allows one to show thumbnails of each PDF page and drag them to re-order the document. [In addition, thumbnails from multiple documents can be dragged from sidebar to sidebar to merge pages into a new document.]

Finally, in addition to the standard graphics formats, Preview can also open Photoshop files. "And additional options appear when you open a graphics file," Dr. Mac wrote. "For example, the Select icon in the toolbar becomes a drop-down menu with cool new commands like Extract Shape and Instant Alpha. And the Tools menu's Adjust Color, Adjust Size, Flip Horizontal, and Flip Vertical commands, which don't work with PDF files, are enabled.

[In] "Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard it's turned into a real powerhouse with many new and useful features," the noted author concluded."