How To Make Preview The Default Tool For Opening Pdf In Mac

Preview is the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X. When you launch Adobe Acrobat on a Mac, you automatically see a prompt asking if you want to set Acrobat as the default PDF viewer on the computer. If you click the “Yes” button, the file association for PDFs on the computer changes to Acrobat, so any time you click on a PDF, it will open in. By default, Google Chrome should open a PDF in the browser and not save the PDF in the download folder to be opened by a PDF editor such as Adobe Reader. To change how Google Chrome treats PDF files in the browser follow the steps below. Choose Tools > Annotate > Text, then type. You can move a text box anywhere on the document. To show the font, size, and color options for text in a text box, choose View > Show Markup Toolbar, then click.

Your Mac’s Preview app doesn’t just contain PDF-editing features. It’s a great little image editor, too. Preview offers basic tools for cropping, resizing, rotating, annotating, and otherwise tweaking images.

Just as QuickTime will never replace iMovie in spite of all its useful media editing features, Preview will never replace Photoshop or even iPhoto. But, for some quick and basic image editing, Preview is surprisingly useful.

Get an Image Into Preview

RELATED:Use Your Mac’s Preview App to Merge, Split, Mark Up, and Sign PDFs

Getting an image into Preview is easy. By default, you can simply double-click an image file and it will open in Preview. If you’ve changed your image file associations, you can Command-click or right-click on an image file, point to Open With, and select Preview.

You can also open the Preview app from the Applications folder, Launchpad, or by pressing Command + Space to open Spotlight Search and searching for Preview. From Preview, you can open the image file directly. Or, with Preview open, you can click File > New From Clipboard to import an image file from your clipboard. You can then edit the image and get it back onto your clipboard by clicking Edit > Copy.

If you’d like to take a screenshot and edit it, you can press Command+Shift+3 to snap a screenshot of your entire screen, Command+Shift+4 to snap a screenshot of a selectable area, or Command+Shift+5 to snap a screenshot of only the current window. The screenshot will be saved as a .png file on your desktop, and you can open it in Preview to begin editing it. (Or, you can hold Ctrl as you take a screenshot — Command+Ctrl+Shift+3, for example. Your Mac will save the screenshot to your clipboard, and you can import it into Preview with the File > New From Clipboard option.)

Rotate an Image

Rotating an image is simple. Simply click the rotate button on the toolbar near the top-right of the window one or more times. You can also click the Edit menu and click one of the Rotate or Flip options.

To save your changes, click File > Save. You can also click File > Duplicate to create a duplicate copy and save the edited image as a new file, keeping the original image before the edits were made.

To undo any changes, click the Edit menu and select Undo. To revert to the original image file before you began editing it, click the File menu, point to Revert To, and select the original image version.

Crop an Image

Cropping an image is also simple. Preview uses the rectangular selection by default, so you should just be able to start clicking and dragging. Click the Tools menu and select Rectangular Selection if this isn’t working as expected.

Click and drag anywhere in the image to select a rectangular section of the image. Click Tools > Crop afterward and preview will crop the selection, cutting out everything else in the image. As with any edit, click File > Save to save your changes.

Resize an Image

Select Tools > Adjust Size to bring up the Resize dialog, which will allow you to resize the image. It supports many measurement units, including pixels. By default, it will resize the image proportionally, maintaining the original aspect ratio to ensure the resized image doesn’t look stretched or smooshed.

Image-resizing tools like this one are useful for shrinking images so they don’t take up as much visible area or on-disk space. They’re not ideal for enlarging an image as the blown-up image will be lower-quality — for this reason, enlarging an image is almost never a good idea.

Annotate an Image

Preview includes various image mark-up tools — the same ones that work in PDFs — which you can access by clicking the Show Markup Toolbar button near the top-right corner of the window. You can also click the Tools menu, point to Annotate, and select one of these tools in the menu.

Select a tool and it will replace the default “rectangular selection” tool. You can then click somewhere in the image to add text, draw a line, highlight an area, create a shape, or insert an arrow — whichever tool you’ve selected.

Adjust Color or Gamma

RELATED:Use Your Mac’s QuickTime App to Edit Video and Audio Files

The built-in Preview application also has a tool for adjusting the color levels or gamma of an image. Click Tools > Adjust Color to access it. Use the options on the pane that appears to adjust various color settings. The pane includes an overall color level graph you can modify as well as sliders for adjusting exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint, sepia, and sharpness. It’s useful for everything from fixing the color levels of an image to applying that old-timey sepia filter Instagram made trendy.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure what the options do — the image will update in the background as you adjust these sliders, so you can see a preview of your color adjustments in real time. You can figure out what the options do by playing with them.

Preview is a surprisingly powerful app. Not only can it view just a single image file at a time, it can view multiple images at a time and quickly cycle between them, producing a sort of slideshow. To do this, select multiple images in the Finder by holding the Shift key and clicking each. Next, Command-click or right-click on the images and open them in Preview. Preview will open with a sidebar showing a list of thumbnails for all the images you opened. Cycle between them using the arrow keys or by clicking the thumbnail images to quickly view all of them.

Image Credit: Quentin Meulepas on Flickr

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The initial view of the PDF depends on how its creatorset the document properties. For example, a document may open ata particular page or magnification.

When you’re reading a document, you can hide all the toolbarsand task panes to maximize the viewing area on your screen.

The basic reading controls, such as page navigation and zoom,appear in a semi-transparent floating toolbar near the bottom ofthe window.

To open Read mode, choose View > Read Mode, or click the Read Mode button in the upper-right corner of the toolbar.
To restore the work area to its previous view, choose View > Read Mode again. You can also click the close button in the floating toolbar.

Read mode with semi-transparent floating toolbar

In FullScreen mode, only the document appears; the menu bar,toolbars, task panes, and window controls are hidden. A PDF creatorcan set a PDF to open in Full Screen mode,or you can set the view yourself. Full Screen modeis often used for presentations, sometimes with automatic page advancementand transitions.

Thepointer remains active in Full Screen modeso that you can click links and open notes. There are two ways toadvance through a PDF in Full Screen mode. Youcan use keyboard shortcuts for navigational and magnification commands, andyou can set a Full Screen preference to display FullScreen navigation buttons that you click to change pagesor exit Full Screen mode.

In the Preferences dialog box underCategories, select Full Screen.

The Full Screen navigation barcontains Previous Page, NextPage , and CloseFull Screen View buttons.These buttons appear in the lower-left corner of the work area.

If the Full Screen navigationbar is not shown, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate througha PDF.

Note:

Ifyou have two monitors installed, the Full Screen modeof a page sometimes appears on only one of the monitors. To pagethrough the document, click the screen displaying the page in FullScreen mode.

To go to the next page, press the Enter,Page Down, or Right Arrow key.
To go to the previous page, press Shift+Enter, PageUp, or the Left Arrow key.

To close Full Screen mode, pressCtrl+L or Esc. (Escape Key Exits must be selected in the FullScreen preferences.)

Note:

To show a Full Screen tool in the Common Tools toolbar, right-click the toolbar area and choose Page Display > Full Screen Mode. Then click the Full Screen tool to switch to Full Screen mode.

Follow the steps in the article to close the Tools pane in Acrobat DC

Follow the steps in the article to retain the last LHP (Left Hand Pane) state across Acrobat launches.

The Preferences dialog box defines a default page layout and customizes your application in many other ways. For viewing PDFs, examine the preferences options for Documents, General, Page Display, and 3D & Multimedia.

The preferences settings control how the application behaves whenever you use it; they are not associated with any particular PDF document. To access the preferences dialog, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat / Adobe Acrobat Reader > Preferences (Mac OS).

Note:

Ifyou install any third-party plug-ins, set these preferences usingthe Third-Party Preferences menu item.

Open Settings

Restore Last View Settings When Reopening Documents: Determines whether documents open automatically to the last viewed page within a work session.
Open Cross-document Links In Same Window: Closes the current document and opens the document being linked to in the same window, minimizing the number of windows open. If the document being linked to is already open in another window, the current document is not closed when you click a link to the open document. If you do not select this option, a new window opens each time you click a link to a different document.
Allow Layer State To Be Set By User Information: Allows the author of a layered PDF document to specify layer visibility based on user information.
Allow Documents To Hide The Menu Bar, Toolbars, And Window Controls: Allows the PDF to determine whether the menu bar, toolbar, and window controls are hidden when the PDF is opened.
Documents In Recently Used List: Sets the maximum number of documents listed in the File menu.

Save Settings

Automatically Save Document Changes To Temporary File Every _ Minutes: Determines how often Acrobat automatically saves changes to an open document.
Save As Optimizes For Fast Web View: Restructures a PDF document for page-at-a-time downloading from web servers.

PDF/A View Mode

View Documents In PDF/A ModeSpecifies when to use this viewing mode: Never, or Only For PDF/A Documents.

Searches the PDF for items that may not be apparent, such as metadata, file attachments, comments, and hidden text and layers. The search results appear in a dialog box, and you can remove any type of item that appears there.

Remove Hidden Information When Closing Document (Not selected by default.)
Remove Hidden Information When Sending Document By Email (Not selected by default.)

Redaction

Adjust Filename When Saving Applied Redaction Marks: Specifies a prefix or suffix to use when saving a file to which redaction marks have been applied.
Choose Localization For Search and Redact Patterns: Specifies which installed language version of Acrobat to use for the patterns. For example, if you installed both the English and German versions, then you can choose either language for the patterns. The Patterns option appears in the Search and Redaction dialog boxes.

Full-Screen Setup

Current Document Only: Specifies whether the display is limited to a single PDF.
Fill Screen With One Page At A Time: Sets the page view to the maximum screen coverage by a single page.
Alert When Document Requests Full Screen: Displays a message before going into Full-Screen mode. Selecting this option overrides a previous selection of Do Not Show This Message Again in that message.
Which Monitor To Use: Specifies the monitor on which full-screen display appears (for users with multiple-monitor configurations).

Full-Screen Navigation

Escape Key Exits: Lets you exit Full-Screen mode by pressing the Esc key. If this option is not selected, you can exit by pressing Ctrl+L.
Show Navigation Bar: Shows a minimal navigation toolbar regardless of the document settings.
Left Click To Go Forward One Page; Right Click To Go Back One Page: Lets you page through an Adobe PDF document by clicking the mouse. You can also page through a document by pressing Return, Shift-Return (to go backward), or the arrow keys.
Loop After Last Page: Lets you page through a PDF document continuously, returning to the first page after the last. This option is typically used for setting up kiosk displays.
Advance Every _ Seconds: Specifies whether to advance automatically from page to page every set number of seconds. You can page through a document using the mouse or keyboard commands even if automatic paging is selected.

Full-Screen Appearance

Background Color: Specifies the window’s background color in Full-Screen mode. You can select a color from the color palette to customize the background color.
Mouse Cursor: Specifies whether to show or hide the pointer when Full-Screen mode is in operation.

Full-Screen Transitions

Ignore All Transitions: Removes transition effects from presentations that you view in Full-Screen mode.
Default Transition: Specifies the transition effect to display when you switch pages in Full-Screen mode and no transition effect has been set for the document.
Direction: Determines the flow of the selected default transition on the screen, such as Down, Left, Horizontal, and so on. The available options vary according to the transition. If no directional options affect the selected default transition, this option is not available.
Navigation Controls Direction: Mimics the user’s progress through the presentation, such as transitioning from top to bottom when the user proceeds to the next page and from bottom to top when the user backtracks to the previous page. Available only for transitions with directional options.

Basic Tools

Use Single Key Accelerators To Access Tools: Enables you to select tools with a single keystroke. This option is deselected by default.
Create Links From URLs: Specifies whether links that weren’t created with Acrobat are automatically identified in the PDF document and become clickable links.
Make Hand Tool Select Text & Images: Enables the Hand tool to function as the Select tool when it hovers over text in an Adobe PDF.
Make Hand Tool Read Articles: Changes the appearance of the Hand tool pointer when over an article thread. Upon the first click, the article zooms to fill the document pane horizontally; subsequent clicks follow the thread of the article.
Make Hand Tool Use Mouse-wheel Zooming: Changes the action of the mouse wheel from scrolling to zooming.
Make Select Tool Select Images Before Text: Changes the order in which the Select tool selects.
Show Quick actions on text selection: Display a quick action toolbar on text or image selection.
Show Online Storage When Opening Files: Display the cloud storage in the file open dialog box.
Show Online Storage When Saving Files: Display the cloud storage while saving the file.
Open Documents As New Tabs In The Same Window (requires restart): Groups multiple documents into tabs when opened. You can also snap or pull out tabs as individual windows. To do this, select a tab and drag the thumbnail that appears away from the toolbar, and then release the tab.
Prompt Before Closing Multiple Tabs: Confirms from the user before closing Acrobat.
Use Fixed Resolution For Snapshot Tool Images: Sets the resolution used to copy an image captured with the Snapshot tool.
Touch Mode: Sets how Acrobat enters the Touch mode, if at all, for touch enabled devices. In Touch mode, Toolbar buttons, panels, and menus shift apart slightly to accommodate selecting with your fingers. The Touch reading mode optimizes viewing and supports most common gestures.

Warnings

Do Not Show Edit Warnings: Disables warning boxes that would normally appear when you delete items such as links, pages, page thumbnails, and bookmarks.
Reset All Warnings: Restores default settings for warnings.

Messages From Adobe

Show Me Messages When I Launch Acrobat: Allows in-product marketing messages from Adobe to appear in the Welcome Screen when you launch the application without a document open. Click a message to get information about features, updates, or online services, or to open an element in the application, such as a task pane. Deselect the option to prevent in-product marketing messages from appearing.

Note:

Transactional messages, which facilitate the Adobe Online Service, cannot be turned off.

Application Startup

Use Only Certified Plug-Ins: Ensures that only Adobe-certified third-party plug-ins are loaded. The notation Currently in Certified Mode indicates either Yes or No depending on its status.
Check 2D Graphics Accelerator (Windows only): (Appears only if your computer hardware supports 2D graphics acceleration.) When selected, allows hardware acceleration usage when the first document is opened. When deselected, hardware acceleration usage starts after the first document is opened. This option can slow startup time, so it is deselected by default.

Note:

This option is available only when the option Use 2D Graphics Acceleration in the Page Display preferences is selected.

Select Default PDF Handler (Windows only): Specifies which application, Reader or Acrobat, is used to open PDFs. This setting applies if you have both Acrobat and Reader installed on your computer. In Windows 7 or earlier, a browser uses this setting only if it is using the Adobe plug-in or add-on for viewing PDF files. In Windows 8, this setting controls which application is the default PDF application for your system, including in your browser. Windows 8 prompts you to allow this change before applying it to your system. Once set, Windows 8 also uses the selected PDF application for tasks related to PDF files, such as previewing, displaying thumbnails, and providing file information.

Default Layout And Zoom

Page Layout: Sets the page layout used for scrolling when you first open a document. The default setting is Automatic. The Page Layout setting in File > Properties > Initial View overrides this value.
Zoom: Sets the magnification level for PDF documents when they are first opened. The default setting is Automatic. The Magnification setting in File > Properties > Initial View overrides this value.

Note:

Two conditions can affectpage layout and zoom. 1) Someone has already set an individual PDFto a different initial view in File > Properties. 2) You havethe option Restore Last View Settings When Reopening Documents selectedin Edit > Preferences > Document category.

Resolution

Use System Setting: Uses the system settings for monitor resolution.
Custom Resolution: Sets the monitor resolution.

Rendering

Smooth Text: Specifies the type of text-smoothing to apply.
Smooth Line Art: Applies smoothing to remove abrupt angles in lines.
Smooth Images: Applies smoothing to minimize abrupt changes in images.
Use Local Fonts: Specifies whether the application uses or ignores local fonts installed on your system. When deselected, substitute fonts are used for any font not embedded in the PDF. If a font cannot be substituted, the text appears as bullets and an error message appears.
Enhance Thin Lines: When selected, clarifies thin lines in the display to make them more visible.
Use Page Cache: Places the next page in a buffer before the current page is viewed to reduce the time required to page through a document.
Use 2D Graphics Acceleration (Windows only): (Appears only if your computer hardware supports 2D graphics acceleration.) Speeds up zooming, scrolling, and redrawing of page content, and speeds the rendering and manipulation of 2D PDF content. This option is selected by default.

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Note:

If this option is not available in the Page Display preferences, you may need to update your GPU card driver to enable this hardware feature. Contact your card vendor or computer manufacturer for an updated driver.

Page Content And Information

Show Large Images: Displays large images. If your system is slow to display image-intensive pages, deselect this option.
Use Smooth Zooming (Windows only): When deselected, turns off animation effects, which improves performance.
Show Art, Trim, & Bleed Boxes: Displays any art, trim, or bleed boxes defined for a document.
Show Transparency Grid: Displays the grid behind transparent objects.
Use Logical Page Numbers: Enables the Number Pages command for matching the position of the page in the PDF to the number printed on the page. A page number, followed by the page position in parentheses, appears in the Page Navigation toolbar and in the Go To Page and Print dialog boxes. For example, i (1 of 1) if the printed number of the first page is i. If this option is not selected, pages are numbered with Arabic numbers starting at 1. Selecting this option helps prevent unexpected behavior when clicking Back or Go Back in your web browser.
Always Show Document Page Size: Displays the page measurements beside the horizontal scroll bar.
Use Overprint Preview: Specifies whether Overprint Preview mode is on only for PDF/X files, never on, always on, or set automatically. When set to Automatic, if a document contains overprints, then Overprint Preview mode is activated. The Overprint Preview mode lets you see (onscreen) the effects of ink aliasing in the printed output. For example, a printer or service provider could create an ink alias if a document contains two similar spot colors and only one is required.
Default Transparency Blending Color Space: Sets the default color space, Working RGB or Working CMYK, for transparency blending.

Reference XObjects View Mode

Show Reference XObject Targets: Specifies the type of documents in which reference XObjects can be viewed.
Location Of Referenced Files (Optional): Specifies a location for the referenced documents.

Touch mode makes it easier to use Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC on touch devices. Toolbar buttons, panels, and menus shift apart slightly to accommodate selecting with your fingers. The Touch reading mode optimizes viewing and supports most common gestures. Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC automatically switch to Touch mode when on a touch-enabled device. You can change the default preference setting for Touch mode.

Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat DC / Adobe Acrobat Reader DC > Preferences (Mac OS).

In Basic Tools, choose the desireddefault setting from the Touch Mode menu.

PDF/Ais an ISO standard for long-term archiving and preservation of electronic documents.Documents you scan to PDF are PDF/A-compliant. You can specify whetheryou want to view documents in this viewing mode.

When youopen a PDF/A compliant document in PDF/A viewing mode, the documentis opened in Read mode to prevent modification. A message is displayedin the document message bar. You will be unable to make changesand add annotations to the document. If you turn off PDF/A mode,you can edit the document.

In the Preferences dialog box under Categories,select Documents.

Choose an option for View Documents In PDF/A Mode: Never,or Only For PDF/A Documents.

You can switch in or out of PDF/A viewing mode by changingthis preference setting.

For a video on working with PDF/A files, see www.adobe.com/go/learn_acr_pdfa_en.

The Line Weights viewdisplays lines with the weights defined in the PDF. When LineWeights view is off, it applies a constant stroke width(1 pixel) to lines, regardless of zoom. When you print the document,the stroke prints at the true width.

Choose View > Show/Hide> Rulers & Grids > Line Weights.To turn off Line Weights view, choose View> Show/Hide > Rulers & Grids > Line Weights again.

Note:

You cannot turn off Line Weights viewwhen viewing PDFs within a web browser.

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Compare a revised PDF to an earlier version (Acrobat Pro)

Use the Compare Documents feature to show the differences between two versions of a PDF. You can customize many options for displaying the compare results.

Specifythe two documents to compare. If one or both of the documents isin a PDF Portfolio, select the PDFPortfolio. Under Package Item, select the componentPDF.

As needed, specify the page ranges in the documents tocompare in the First Page and Last Page boxes.

Select the Document Description that best describes thedocuments you are comparing, and click OK.

Once the two documents are analyzed, a results documentappears with the Compare panel open. The new document is shown withannotations indicating the changes. The first page shows a summaryof the comparison results.

To hide the annotations that display changes, click Hide Results.
To specify the display options for compare results, click Show Options. You can specify the type of changes to display, and the color scheme and opacity of the annotations. To return to the page thumbnails, click Hide Options.
To show each of the documents in its own window, from the options menu , choose Show Documents Tiled or Show Documents Side By Side. To synchronize the relevant pages while showing the documents in their own windows, from the options menu, choose Synchronize Pages.
Click a page thumbnail to go directly to that page. To change the size of the page thumbnails, from the options menu, choose Thumbnail Size > [option].
Drag the splitter bar at the bottom of the Compare panel up to show thumbnails of the old document. Click a thumbnail from the old document to open it in a new window.