[Music]
- Hi, this is Don McAllister, and welcome
to another ScreenCasts Online weekly tip video.
Continuing on with our occasional look at Preview,
here are some extra tips to help you get the most
out of this powerful, free application.
Now, one of the things I do every week,
to create the graphics for the shows and ScreenCasts Online
is to capture an application icon using Preview.
It's really simple to do, so let me show you how to do that.
Let's say, for instance, I wanted to capture
this Automator icon.
I've gone to my applications folder, selected Automator,
and then if I just do a Command C, okay,
that should copy some of the resources of the application
to the clipboard.
If I now go to Preview,
and rather than saying open here, if we say file,
new from clipboard, and now I have the icon captured
in Preview for me to work on, to export as a JPEG or PNG.
I can resize it.
If I were to export it as is, I'd get a 1024 by 1024 icon.
But if I wanted to resize this, I could say tools,
adjust size, let's got with a 512 icon.
Say okay.
That will resize it for me.
And then to export, just say file, export.
To change the format, if I wanted a transparent background,
I would select PNG, and leave the alpha channel switched on.
Let's call this icon, and we'll save it to our desktop.
So if we just save, right we've now got a brand-new
icon file 512 by 512.
So let's close down this, and open up a PDF in Preview.
Now, this is just an example form, a PDF form,
that I've downloaded from the internet.
And one of the nice things with Preview is that
you can actually complete these fillable forms.
I can actually tap into these areas here,
it's very, very easy to complete this form.
But down here, at the bottom, we have a box for a signature.
Now one of the party tricks with Preview is that it is
very, very easy to get a real signature into Preview.
And you can do that either via the tools option,
and go to annotate and then signature and manage signatures.
Or, if you go to view, if you show the markup tool bar,
and there's an option here for signatures.
Now currently, I haven't got any signatures registered
with Preview, but I can use my track pad,
I'm on a MacBook, or I can use my camera
to actually take a photo.
But let's have a go at the track pad first.
So, if I click here to begin.
And let's just write 'Fred' say.
It's actually quite difficult on the track pad.
But there's Fred.
We'll press the space bar to finish.
We'll say done.
Right, so there is my Fred signature.
If I want to apply this to my PDF form,
I just tap on it.
I have this box, I can move the box to wherever I want.
So just centre in that box there.
Hold down the shift key, and resize it.
And again, I can just move it into place.
So there's my Fred signature.
But I'm just going to backspace and get rid of that.
Another really neat trick, is to use the camera
on your Mac.
So if I go back up to signatures, create signature.
And this time, use the camera.
And I'm basically just holding up a white piece of paper.
There we go, Joe Smith.
We'll say done.
There's my new Joe Smith.
So if I now, click on here, I can resize this,
hold the shift key down to keep the aspect ratio.
There's my Joe Smith signature lined up nicely in the box.
And we're done.
To manage your signatures it's very straightforward.
All you do is click on this list here.
As you hover over each signature, you'll see that
they have this little x next to them,
so to get rid of Fred click on the x, and that's now done.
Let me go away from here, and we'll close this down.
Now, I am using iCloud Drive, and I have data and documents
switched on, so anything that is on my desktop or in my
documents folder is synchronised using iCloud
to my other devices.
Now, although there is no Preview, a separate Preview
application in iOS, but did you know you can still access
some Preview functionality within iOS, even if we haven't
got a stand-alone or separate Preview app on iOS.
Let me go across to the iPad and I'll show you that.
So, here we are across on my iPad,
and I have to thank per Ferando, across on the
ScreenCasts Online slack group for pointing this out
to me, I didn't really know it existed.
But, if you go to iCloud Drive, and as I mentioned before,
that document is actually on my desktop.
So if I go into desktop, there's my PDF.
If I tap on the document, there is the PDF
with my signature added, so that's the change I made
on my Mac, but that's now synchronised across
using iCloud Drive.
However, if you look up in the top corner,
we have a markup icon.
So if I tap that, across the bottom we now have
some of the Preview functionality replicated across
in the iCloud Drive application.
So I can use annotation, I can just tap on there,
and then annotate my document.
I can create a loop.
I can also add text as well if I want.
I can also get access to my signature.
So there's Joe Smith.
And from here I can also add or remove signature.
If we hit the plus, now, no camera at this point,
but I can use my finger on-screen.
We'll say done.
And there is my new Fred signature over there.
And if I tap away, tap back on the list,
Fred is now in that list.
And that will be synchronised across to Preview on my Mac.
So I can select Fred from there as well.
But let's tap away.
And some of the controls down here, changing colour,
putting lines in, and also formatting text.
So then we're finished, back to the desktop.
And no save, just changing those attributes
will update the file.
And those changes will be synchronised in the document
across onto my Mac desktop.