NOV
07
Leopard - New Preview Tools
Posted by Wendy
Leopard Preview got some new tools, from the coolest and most useful one to the ugliest and least useful.
Adjust Color
This is the most useful new feature of Preview in Leopard. As its name states, it helps you adjust your image color right inside the Preview. This tool isn't attached to the toolbar. However, you should be able to call it up with keystrokes 
C
▸ Tools ▸ Adjust Color
With some adjustments on Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Temperature, Tint and Sepia, you could actually enhance special effect to your image, like what I did to this Leopard's image Clown Fish.jpg. This image can be found inside
Macintosh HD ▸ Library ▸ Desktop Pictures ▸ Nature.
Sidebar
Sidebar helps you hide/reveal the sidebar of your Preview. This is useful in the sense that you will be distracted by other pictures thumbnail views on the sidebar. As you can see in the picture below, I've opened 19 documents and I've successfully hidden the sidebar.
Inspector
What else would be more efficient than seeing the file info right on the spot? This is what our Preview's Inspector do. It reveals all the file details that we need to know. For image file, it will reveal Image Size, Resolution and Color Mode. Image below has size 502x234 pixels, with resolution 72 pixels/inch and RGB color mode.
Annotate
This, according to me, is the least useful among all Leopard Preview's new features. With this feature we can draw a circle on the image in order to emphasize some portion of the image. Unfortunately, you cannot change the annotation color, red is the only color that you can get.
Tips and Tricks
In addition to this little article, I will humbly share my experience and some tips and tricks that can be used for Preview :
- Toolbar can be customized by clicking on the pill button (top-right corner) while holding keystrokes
- You can move around your overflowing image (relative to Preview Pane) with a hand-shaped tool.
- It's not wise to use the Adjust Color tool all of the time. According to my experience with Leopard, this tool can make your Preview freeze (and here it is, the Spinning Beachball of Death).
