Use Preview Like a Pro in Mac OS X 10.6
If you are thinking of buying Photoshop or another expensive photo editing program, first consider a program built right in to your Mac. If you are buying Photoshop so you can take the background out of a photo, highlight a certain part of a document, or replace the background of a photo with another one, you needn't spend money on Photoshop. The answer is Preview. With the updates in Leopard and Snow Leopard, Preview has changed from a simple photo viewing application to a useful photo-editing tool. It's amazing all the things you can do with Preview if you know how to use it!
Contents
Steps
Taking the background out of images
- Open Preview.
- Use Preview to open your image. Go to File>Open and choose the image you wish to open.
- Click the "Select" drop-down menu.
- Choose the "Instant Alpha" button.
- Click wherever you want to erase the background.
- You will notice that part of your picture turns red.
- Drag until most of your background is red.
- When you have most of the background selected, hit the "Delete" key.
- This won't erase all of the images background, but it should get most of it.
- Now it comes down to personal preference on which tool to use to clean up the rest of the background.
Isolating a part of a picture
- Drag a rectangle (or circle if that's what you want) around the area you want to keep.
- Hit the "Invert Selection" button under the "Edit" menu.
- Hit "Delete"
Annotating on a Picture/PDF
- Open your picture.
- Hit the "Annotate" button
- Make your selections!
Tips
- If you have OS X Lion or newer, Preview will look different. To access Instant Alpha, click the Annotate button then click the Instant Alpha button from the Annotate menu.
- If you don't have all the features shown in this Tutorial, you probably have an outdated version of OS X.
Things You'll Need
- A Mac running Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Tiger
