Preview is the vendor-supplied

image viewer An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical images; it can often handle various graphics file formats. Such software usually renders the image according to properties of the display such as color depth, ...

and

PDF viewer This is a list of links to articles on software used to manage Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. The distinction between the various functions is not entirely clear-cut; for example, some viewers allow adding of annotations, signatures, e ...

of the

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

operating system. In addition to viewing and printing

digital image A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions ...

s and

Portable Document Format Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

(PDF) files, it can also edit these media types. It employs the Aqua graphical user interface, the

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

graphics layer, and the ImageIO and

Core Image Core Image is a pixel-accurate, near-realtime, non-destructive image processing technology in Mac OS X. Implemented as part of the QuartzCore framework of Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Core Image provides a plugin-based architecture for applying filt ...

frameworks.

History

Like macOS, Preview originated in the

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprieta ...

operating system by

NeXT Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

, where it was part of every release since 1989. Between 2003 and 2005,

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

claimed Preview was the "fastest PDF viewer on the planet."

Supported file types

Preview can open the following file types. * AI – Adobe Illustrator artwork files (if PDF content included in file) * BMP – Windows bitmap files * CR2 – Raw image file used by Canon cameras *

DAE DAE or Dae may refer to: As an acronym * DAE (chemotherapy), a chemotherapy regimen consisting of Daunorubicin, Ara-C (cytarabine) and Etoposide * Daporijo Airport, the IATA code for an airport in India * Daxing Airport Express, the airport trans ...

– Collada 3D files * DNG – Digital negative files *

FAX Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

– Faxes * FPX – FlashPix files *

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

– Graphics Interchange Format files * HDR – High-dynamic-range image files * ICNS – Apple Icon Image files *

ICO is an action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released for the PlayStation 2 video game console in 2001 and 2002 in various regions. It was designed and directed by Fumito U ...

– Windows icon files *

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

– Joint Photographic Experts Group files *

JPEG 2000 JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi (later the JPEG president), with the intention of superseding the ...

– JPEG 2000 files * OBJ – Wavefront 3D file *

OpenEXR OpenEXR is a high-dynamic range, multi-channel raster file format, released as an open standard along with a set of software tools created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), under a free software license similar to the BSD license. It is notabl ...

– OpenEXR files *

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

– Portable Document Format version 1.5 + some additional features *

PICT The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ear ...

–

QuickDraw A quickdraw (also known as an extender) is a piece of climbing equipment used by rock and ice climbers to allow the climbing rope to run freely through protection such as a bolt anchors or other traditional gear while leading. A quickdraw ...

image files * PNG – Portable Network Graphics files * PPM – Netpbm Color Image files * PNTG – MacPaint Bitmap Graphic files * PPT – PowerPoint files *

PSD PSD may refer to: Educational bodies * Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, a Pre-K to 12th grade school for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania * Philippine School Doha, a Filipino scho ...

– Adobe Photoshop files *

QTIF The Apple Developer Tools are a suite of software tools from Apple to aid in making software dynamic titles for the macOS and iOS platforms. The developer tools were formerly included on macOS install media, but are now exclusively distributed ...

– QuickTime image files *

RAD RAD or Rad may refer to: People * Robert Anthony Rad Dougall (born 1951), South African former racing driver * Rad Hourani, Canadian fashion designer and artist * Nickname of Leonardus Rad Kortenhorst (1886–1963), Dutch politician * Radley R ...

– Radiance 3D Scene Description files *

RAW Raw is an adjective usually describing: * Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made * Raw food, uncooked food Raw or RAW may also refer to: Computing and electronics * .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...

– Raw image files *

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

– Silicon Graphics Image files *

STL STL may refer to: Communications * Standard telegraph level *Studio/transmitter link International law *Special Tribunal for Lebanon The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), also referred to as the Lebanon Tribunal or the Hariri Tribunal, is a ...

– STereoLithography 3D format * TGA – TARGA image files *

TIF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

(TIFF) – Tagged Image File Format files *

XBM In computer graphics, the X Window System used X BitMap (XBM), a plain text binary image format, for storing cursor and icon bitmaps used in the X GUI. The XBM format is superseded by XPM, which first appeared for X11 in 1989. Format XBM files ...

– X BitMap files In

macOS Monterey macOS Monterey (version 12) is the eighteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Big Sur, it was announced at WWDC 2021 on June 7, 2021, and released on October 25, 2021. m ...

and earlier, Preview supported the display of

EPS EPS, EPs or Eps may refer to: Commerce and finance * Earnings per share * Electronic Payment Services, in Hong Kong, Macau, and Shenzhen, China * Express Payment System, in the Philippines Education * Edmonton Public Schools, in Edmonton, Al ...

and

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

documents using on-the-fly conversion to PDF format. However, this functionality was removed in

macOS Ventura macOS Ventura (version 13) is the nineteenth and current major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Mac computers. The successor to macOS Monterey, it was announced at WWDC 2022 on June 6, 2022, and launched on October 24, 2 ...

, although users can continue to print and files by dragging them into the printer queue. The version of Preview included with OS X 10.3 (''Panther'') could play animated GIF images, for which an optional button could be added to the toolbar. As of OS X 10.4 (''Tiger''), Preview lost playback functionality and animated GIF files are displayed as individual frames in a numbered sequence.

Features

Editing PDF documents

Preview can encrypt PDF documents, and restrict their use; for example, it is possible to save an encrypted PDF so that a password is required to copy data from the document, or to print it. However, encrypted PDFs cannot be edited further, so the original author should always keep an unencrypted version. A new "edit button" where the picture can be edited is introduced in Version 7. The "edit button" allows options to insert shapes, lines, do cropping, and among other things. Some features which are otherwise only available in professional PDF editing software are provided by Preview: It is possible to extract single pages out of multi-page documents (e.g. PDF files), sort pages, and drag & drop single or multiple pages between several opened multi-page documents, or into other applications, such as attaching to an opened email message.

Editing images

Preview offers basic image correction tools using

processing technology implemented in macOS, and other features like shape extraction, color extraction, cropping, and rotation tools. When annotating images, Preview uses vector shapes and text until the image is rasterized to JPEG, PNG or another bitmap format.

and image documents can also be supplied with keywords, and are then automatically indexed using macOS's system-wide

Spotlight Spotlight or spot light may refer to: Lighting * Spot lights, automotive auxiliary lamps * Spotlight (theatre lighting) * Spotlight, a searchlight * Stage lighting instrument, stage lighting instruments, of several types Art, entertainment, an ...

search engine.

Import and export

Preview can directly access image scanners supported by macOS and import images from the scanner. Preview can convert between

image format An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be c ...

s; it can export to BMP, JP2, JPEG, PDF, PICT, PNG, SGI, TGA, and TIFF. Using macOS's print engine (based on

CUPS CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular computer printer, printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a Server (computi ...

) it is also possible to "print into" a Postscript file, a PDF-X file or directly save the file in

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...

, for example scanned photos. Beginning with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Preview restricts the Format option popup menu in the Save As dialog to commonly used types. It is possible to access the full format list by holding down the Option key when clicking the Format popup menu. (GIF, ICNS, JPEG, JPEG-2000, Microsoft BMP, Microsoft Icon, OpenEXR, PDF, Photoshop, PNG, SGI, TGA, TIFF.)

Issues

As of OS X 10.9.2, Preview does not support ISO-standardized PDF (ISO 32000), and when saving, destroys aspects of PDF files without warning to the user.

References

External links

'Mac Basics: Preview app views and edits images and PDFs'AppleInsider review
from 2003 *MacProNews article

from July 2004 *Sams Publishin
sample chapter on Preview
from ''Mac OS X Panther Applications and Utilities''. Includes some instructions for use, with screenshots. {{DEFAULTSORT:Preview (Software) Image viewers PDF readers MacOS