Preview will then decide what you’re trying to select based on detectable edges. The idea is to “paint” around the edge of the area that you want to select. When you choose Smart Lasso Preview presents you with a very broad drawing tool. For this reason, Preview includes the other two selection tools-Smart Lasso and Instant Alpha. Making a selection in this way can be challenging because a mouse or trackpad isn’t exactly a precision device. But a Lasso selection isn’t complete until the two ends meet you must end your selection where you began it. (If you wish to force a perfect circle, hold down the Shift key while making your selection.) The other three selection tools require a bit more explanation.Ī Lasso selection lets you draw a selection that exactly matches the contours of the object that you wish to select, much as you might trace around the edges of a magazine’s picture with a pencil or pen. Elliptical is straightforward-you use this to create an oval or circular selection. If you’ve exposed the toolbar, you’ll see five selection tools listed along the top-right of the toolbar: Rectangle, Elliptical, Lasso, Smart Lasso, and Instant Alpha. You don’t have to use a rectangular selection tool, however. You’ll see the exact same sheet with the same options in the Format pop-up menu. If you have some objection to touching the Option key (and really, isn’t it time you got over that?), choose File > Export. (If you’re unfamiliar with these image types and wonder why you might choose one or another, see my “Ģ0 more technical terms every Mac user should know.”) Use Preview’s Save As or Export command to convert your images. Unless you have a very good reason for using JPEG 2000 or OpenEXR, stick with JPEG or PNG. (The Save As command won’t appear if you don’t hold down Option.) In the sheet that appears, click the Format menu and choose a different format your choices are JPEG, JPEG 2000 (a more recent JPEG standard that provides better compression than the original JPEG format did), OpenEXR (a high-dynamic-range image format), PDF, PNG, and TIFF. One avenue for doing so is to hold down the Option key and choose File > Save As. Once an image is open, you can convert it. Or within the Preview application, you can choose File > Open and navigate to the image you want to open. Alternatively, you can drag images to the Preview icon in the dock.
By default, it (they) will open in Preview.
The easiest is to double-click a compatible image file (or group of selected files). You have various ways to open images in Preview. Consequently, we’ll concentrate on images this week, and In the next lesson we’ll turn our attention to Preview and PDFs. Because Preview’s abilities go beyond the obvious ones, we have a fair bit of ground to cover.