How to Use Preview for Basic Image Editing: Crop, Rotate and Resize

Preview in Mac OS X has received an injection of features with the release of Leopard (OS 10.5). Among the new features are handy photo-editing capabilities. Here, you'll learn to use the most popular features of photo-editing programs, such as cropping, rotating and resizing images.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Computer running Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

Getting Started

1. 

   Launch the Preview application.

2. 

   Open the photo you'd like to edit by going to "File" > "Open" (or keyboard shortcut Apple Command-O).

3. Zoom in or out of your image to view the whole thing comfortably on your screen, using the plus or minus keys on Preview's toolbar.

Crop the Image

1. 

   Click "Select" on the Preview toolbar.

2. 

   Click and drag your mouse to specify the crop area. You'll see a dashed outline with gray dots on midpoints and corners.

3. Crop the image by selecting "Tools" from the top menu and clicking on "Crop," or use the keyboard shortcut Command-K after selecting the area to crop.

Rotate the Image

1. Select "Tools" from Preview's top menu.

2. 

   Select which way you'd like to rotate the image. You can "Rotate Left" or "Rotate Right," using shortcut keys Command-L and Command-R, respectively. Preview rotates the image left or right 90 degrees at a time.

3. Or you can select "Flip Horizontally" or "Flip Vertically" to make a mirror image of the photo.

Resize the Image

1. Select "Tools" from the top menu.

2. Click on "Adjust Size."

3. Select the "Fit Into" drop-down box to scale the image to one of the presets. These are standard Web and computer presets for images. If you're uploading the images to a photo-sharing site like Flickr, 800x600 will work just fine.

4. 

   If you want to manually set the measurements, select the drop-down box next to the height and width text boxes to select the type of measurement you want to work with. If you're going to print the image, inches are recommended. Otherwise, use pixels for the Web or whatever you're comfortable using.

5. Type in the height and/or width (or percentage if you selected "percent" in the previous step) to resize the image. If the "Scale Proportionally" checkbox is checked, you can specify either height or width, and Preview will calculate the other dimension automatically.

6. Type in the resolution you'd like for the image. If you're using the image for print, 300 is recommended. For the Web, set this number to 72, as this will reduce the file size of the image.

7. Click "OK" to apply the settings.

Save the Image

1. Select "File" > "Save As" from Preview's top menu.

2. Select "Where" you want the image to be saved.

3. Select your file format.

4. 

   Hit the "Save" button.

Resources

• Apple: Leopard Home Page