Image editing on a Mac with Preview - tutorial

Preview is a free program that comes with all Macs and can be used to edit images quickly and easily. This tutorial shows you how to:

• Customise the toolbar
• Crop, resize and rotate your images
• Adjust the colour (exposure, saturation, contrast etc.)
• Annotate images with symbols and text
• Remove backgrounds using the smart lasso and instant alpha tools

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Closed Caption:

hello in this tutorial I'm going to show
you how to use preview on a mac to edit
your photos and images now preview comes
with all max is free piece of software
and it's actually really powerful and
you may think i'm on the outset that it
doesn't really do very much but it's got
lots of hidden features and that can
help you to edit images really
effectively and so by default if you've
got a JPEG image that's coming from your
camera or from the web or some of the
source
it will usually open in preview so let's
go ahead and open up an image
so this is a picture of a door not very
exciting and but i want to show you how
news previews tools and to edit this
image now for some reason Apple of
hidden quite a lot of the good tools and
so this is that the toolbar that you'll
get by default but it's missing quite a
few of the tools that you might want to
use
so the first thing i would suggest doing
is customizing this toolbar
so if you right-click in the toolbar you
can choose customize toolbar and you can
actually pick some of the useful tools
that you might want to use
so for instance you might want to crop
photos and that's always quite useful
tool so you just pick up the tool and
drag it to the toolbar and it will be
added for future use
inspector is also quite useful tool
because it gives you information about
your images and so such as exposure what
camera you used when they were taken and
what the dimensions are and the size and
that kind of thing so that's very useful
rotate again is something that's
incredibly useful
and you may also want to scale your
images and so this shows you at what
what percentage of the full image size
is being shown
that's quite useful so and and the final
one that I would choose is moved text
and select because we're going to be
using that a little bit later
so once you've customized your toolbar
just press done and now you can see all
these new tools that you've chosen is
showing up
so now these tools are available for use
and then really really easy so if i
wanted to crop this image and all i need
to do is to drag around the area that I
wanted to select and press crop and you
see now its crop the image to that area
that I've selected and you can also
resize your image you can see here that
it's only be shown at nineteen percent
at the moment because this is quite a
large image if i wanted to change the
size of the image i would go to tools
and and I would go to adjust size and i
can adjust the size in various ways and
so pixels the percent of the original
size inches centimeters millimeters and
points
I'm going to stick with pit pixels and
i'm going to change the width to 500
pixels so that's a twenty percent
reduction in the overall image size
click ok so now this is showing the
image at full size you can see in the
scale box showing a hundred percent and
so that is the full size of my image and
if i wanted to rotate this image
very simply just click rotate and round
it goes
so that's a quick and easy way to crop
resize and rotate your images things
that you probably want to do on an
everyday basis and it just saved you
going into bigger image editors like and
Photoshop or GIMP and there's no point
in opening up a big pieces of where it
slow to run if you just want to do those
quick adjustments to your images
so that's the first thing I wanted to
show you i'm just going to close that
image now
and now I wanted to show you how to
adjust the color of your image because
again this is quite hidden feature in
previous and so open up an image that
you want to adjust the color on
and if you go to tools you'll see here
it says it just color if you click that
little and window will open up and it's
this very sliders to just different
settings so you could adjust the
exposure of your image and you could
adjust the contrast and so on and
saturation temperature tint and that
kind of thing
I think just for fun i'm going to
desaturate this a bit which means taking
some of the color out of it and and i'm
going to up the contrast a bit to make
it a bit more punchy and i think i might
just up the the sharpness a little bit
as well so when you finish you can just
close that little box down and now what
I was going to show you how to do is to
add text and symbols to your images
because again this is quite a useful
feature but it's somewhat hidden in
previewing to do it you simply need to
click on annotate and you'll see that
all and selection of icons has arrived
the bottom of the screen here this
allows you to add symbols and text to
your image so for instance i might want
to add an arrow pointing at something of
interest in the image
all you did was selected to all by
clicking it and then you drag it across
onto your image and hey presto
you can change the color of it by
clicking the color that box and perhaps
you want the purple arrow or asthma doc
popping up or a red arrow and you can
change the width by clicking the line
with and and selecting from the various
options we could have a dotted one if
you wanted
so large . Adaro and so on see mess
about with it
if you wanted to move their own just
pick it up and drag it drag it around
and if you wanted to resize it or change
the angle and if you click on one of
these great dots at the end even then
turn around and change it to your
heart's content but i'm going to get rid
of that because i don't particularly
want an arrow on my picture
another thing you could do is add a
shape and so for instance if you wanted
to circle something in your picture to
bring to somebody's attention you could
and put an oval
so perhaps i want to draw attention to
this gate post here
just circle it with an oval and again it
can change the color and so you can
change it to blue
yeah what having and you can change the
line thickness and again to your heart's
content
so that's quite useful if if you want to
point something out in a picture perhaps
and you want to you know you're
critiquing somebody's photography or
what have you or you just want to label
something and in a diagrammatic way
that's the easy way to do that but I'm
going to get rid of us as well because
what I really want to do is add some
text if you want to add text you click
on this text button and I've actually
just opened the the front panel as well
show you the various options for your
text and if you want to add text you
just drag text panel onto your picture
and type away so i'm going to type
trinity college dublin because that's
where this picture was taken
and in the front panel you can make very
selections so you can choose different
different types of fonts you could
choose different colors so you could
yes that's a little bit goodie for my
taste but you could choose whatever you
want it and I'm going to go back to say
feature or that's quite quite nice and
change the size and you can play about
with it as much as you want and what I
think I think I'm probably going to go
for impact and fairly fairly large and
you can also change the opacity which
means and which governs how much of the
background picture shows through
and so if i choose white again and stiff
yeah and drag this opacity slider and
you can see that varying amounts of the
image go through more of the image shows
through as a lesson
the capacity there so it's like that up
and down and it's quite nice to have it
a little bit opaque so that some of your
image shows through and I didn't see if
i move if I move this around the picture
you can see especially where there's
something dark in the background you can
see that showing through quite clearly
anyway i'm just going to leave that
there for now
close that down and then of course you
can save your image what I would always
recommend is saving ass so that you
don't say that on top of the original so
I'm simply going to say the hours
trinity college
save it to my desktop and it saved it as
a JPEG image or it will do
and when I can use two stops being slow
there we are
so i can actually show you the original
that's the original quite bright image
of Trinity College and this is my and
adjustment so I've got rid of some of
the colonies in the saturation -
and i've added some text on that one
knew where I says so again this could
all be done in preview which is a free
tool which comes with your mark
very very useful but a lot of these
tools are in a little bit hidden
the last thing I wanted to show you is
how to remove the background and from a
picture so I've got a nice port right
here with my dad and let's just make
that full screen there we are
but imagine if i wanted to cut him out
from the background so I don't want to
see in the sky in the background I just
want him
you can do that using the instance alpha
tool which is it quite an interesting -
I'm it basically chops out loads of the
background
it does it advice by recognizing colors
and shopping out similar colors so you
just simply hold and drag and anything
that's red will be chopped out and but
you want to make sure that you don't
talk about anything from the actual
image so simply hold and drag until it
gets to the edge but not over the edge
of what you want to keep you know it's
quite delicate made a bit of a mess of
it because you can see that I've got a
bit of the Hat and I want to keep the
Hat and so you have to do it in stages
to be quite careful
and when you select it you just delete
and counting on doing that
this is going to be very rough and muddy
but it gives you the idea of what you
need to do anyway
chop chop chop
slept a little bit
they're sharp that's a bit of the sky so
that i can go can go
oops don't want to get all the heart
ok so this is obviously i'd spend more
time with little boys doing it properly
and under it you can zoom in if you
missed a little bit so we were missing
some bits at the top hair
i get about to the instant again this
bit here is in need of a relative minor
outlying that and so when I mean it tidy
you can tidy all but you get the idea
and so that's basically how to get rid
of a about ground and then of course you
could copy this image and paste it on a
different background so i could make it
look like he's in the Bahamas and rather
than south shields
that's one way to get rid of a
background the other way to get rid of a
background is to use the Smart lawsuit
tool and which is in the same place if
you go to the Select menu at the top you
select smart lawsuit and only do is draw
around the thing that you want to cut
out from the background so I'm going to
cut out this world and
I swamp from the water behind it so I
just need to draw out
try to make sure that the edge is
underneath the red line again i'm doing
this really really quickly so it might
be a bit of a mess but it gives you an
idea around
I go making sure I'm getting the edges
of this one's box or get in it and you
just need to make sure that you finish
what you started
that is joined up and hopefully there we
are you can see that this one is
selected now it's a bit jumpy around
here because i made a bit of a mess of
it and now if you wanted to cut out the
background what you need to do is go to
edit and invert selection so that the
background is selected rather than this
one and then you just press delete and
there is the backgrounds disappear as I
say it's a bit messy because they did it
quickly but that gives you an idea of
how to use that tool
so anyway I hope that's been helpful
introduction to preview and hope it
helps you to realize that previews are
really quick really useful tool for
doing some image editing and of course
it comes free with all marks so it's
probably sitting there on your desktop
hardly ever being used and so now you
know how to make use of it and more
helpful features
thank you very much for listening if you
want more tutorials do go to www.hsn.com
. UK
bye-bye
yeah