Meeting Report

Surprising Preview

At this meeting, held on 24th of March, Robert demonstrated the surprisingly powerful features of the Mac’s Preview app and PDF editing options on iOS. Members also shared topics and suggestions.

Surprising Preview

Robert talked about some of the, perhaps surprising, things you can do in the Mac’s included Preview app:

  • Delete and rearrange pages in a PDF and merge in pages from other PDF files. The Contact Sheet view is particularly useful for this.
  • Exporting one or multiple images as a PDF by printing and using the “PDF/Save as PDF” option. This also works in any other Mac app that can print.
  • Selecting and then copying a portion of an image to the clipboard. This can then be pasted on to another image to compose it or into a new image using the “New from Clipboard” menu option.
  • The many features of the markup tools which can be used to highlight, add text and shapes, and cover up unwanted parts of an image or PDF. There’s also a redaction tool which makes sure redacted text is not retained in the data of a PDF document.
  • Using the markup tool “Instant alpha” to make transparent images. These can then be copied and pasted onto another image.
  • Create a new solid colour image by duplicating an existing image, resizing it and then covering it with a rectangle of the desired colour.

Ben mentioned using the markup signature feature to add his signature to PDF documents.

Make Use Of has a handy list of Preview tips and tricks.

Editing PDFs on iOS

Robert also demonstrated how most of the PDF editing options of Preview are also available when you open a PDF from the Files app on iOS and iPadOS. Tom’s Guide have an article explaining how this works.

Member topics