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Leopard's Preview 4.0: Hands-on

updated 04:45 pm EDT, Tue October 2, 2007

Preview 4.0: Hands-on

Preview 4.0, the new version of Apple's application for viewing various image formats, PDF, RTF files and more that will be included with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has received an interface makeover that makes it look more like Mail.app, a new sidebar that displays thumbnails of each page in a PDF, new search functionality and more according to a hands-on report from AppleInsider. The new sidebar can be set to any width, and will show multiple rows of thumbnails. There is also a zoom slider, similar to zoom function in iPhoto, that allows the items to grow and shrink instantly. Thumbnails in the sidebar can also be dragged and dropped to be reordered, as well as to add or remove pages from the document. You can also perform search queries from a field in the sidebar, which can then be grouped by relevancy.

There are also new toolbars -- one handles graphics and another handles PDFs. The new PDF toolbar has move, text and select modes, while its annotation features must be manually added to the Toolbar.



Additional graphics tools include annotation with boxes, ovals, free-form arrows and more. You can select a region where a text box will be placed, and also edit the box later. An Image Correction panel uses a translucent panel like iPhoto, and there's size adjustment sheet that at allows resizing of width and height based on percentage, inches or pixels.



Extraction tools have also been built into this release. You can pull an object from its background (akin to a magic wand function), and an Instant Alpha tool. There's an Extract Shape tool that lets you use a translucent red marker to draw around desired shapes in images, with further refinements that let you discard any garbage bits of image surrounding your selection.



The net result is that Preview has become a better PDF reader/editor, and also a very decent photo editing and extraction tool.

[Images courtesy of AppleInsider]

 
Previous Comments

nice

10/02, 05:56pm reply

This looks like a really impressive update to Preview. Finally a bit of positive Apple news.

petsounds

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2007

0

Preview in Finder

10/02, 06:06pm reply

Finder needs a new Preview also! M$ actually does viewing content within Explorer Very well. That and their print options are some of their best work.

I hope Apple brings these ideas to Leopard.

MiMiC

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2007

0

window printing

10/02, 06:48pm reply

Leopard better includes "print window". It's one of the useful features that doesn't migrate over from OS9.

coffeetime

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2006

0

Need to be able to email

10/02, 07:30pm reply

Maybe I've missed it all these years but I don't see any way to email Preview docs directly from the Preview menu, which you can do with Acrobat and it's really useful...

zl9600

Forum Regular

Joined: Oct 2003

0

lean photo editor

10/02, 08:45pm reply

This is great - a full featured PDF viewer plus a lean photo editor.

bhuot

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2003

0

Alpha is Great

10/02, 09:42pm reply

The Alpha feature is new in Keynote. It works impressively well.

surferboy

Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Jul 2003

0

email direct from preview

10/03, 10:30pm reply

You can email a document directly from Preview and any other Mac app by pressing "print" but instead of printing choose the PDF pop-up button on the lower left side. The second (or third) option is "email PDF" which converts whatever document you have to a PDF, opens your default email program, creates a new msg and places the PDF file inline in the message. Slick.

chas_m

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

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