Mac OSX Preview Cropping Life Of Pi

Sometimes you want to crop an image right before you email it or post it on Facebook.

Opening iPhoto seems like too much work, so you email or post what you’ve got.

But OSX lets you crop images in seconds with very little effort.

Here’s How:

  • Double-click any image, photo, graphic or PDF and it will open in Preview. Preview is the default application for these media types.
  • When Preview first opens, moving the cursor over an image changes it into a crosshairs. This is called selection mode.
  • Press down your trackpad or hold the button on your mouse, and drag the crosshairs until you have drawn a rectangular marquee.

Mac OSX Preview - Jessica Chastain Before Cropping

  • The marquee has the following features:
    • It is bordered by a crawling dotted line that defines the area that will be cropped.
    • The eight circles around the rectangle are splines. You can pull on any of these to change the size of the rectangle.
    • Drag any of the eight splines and you will get a width X height measurement in pixels.
    • Click inside the rectangle, hold down the mouse button and you can drag the entire rectangle.
  • When you are ready to crop your image, press Command K.

Mac OSX Preview - Jessica Chastain After Cropping

  •  Click the red cherry button to close. Preview autosaves the cropped image. Note that once you close Preview, you cannot undo the cropping.

Jessica Chastain

If you’d like more information on Preview’s mark-up tools, you can read – How to Mark-Up A PDF Using Preview

Hope this helps. Have a good week.

If you have questions, please use the Comments section below.

John Carroll - No Problem Mac

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