10.4: How to drag-scroll oversize images in Preview

Sep 18, '06 07:30:08AM

Contributed by: hargreae

If you open a PDF in Preview, you can have the Tool Mode button in the toolbar. One of these tools is the Scroll Tool, which appears as a hand icon so you can grab the PDF and move it around. You can also switch between tools via the Tools menu and its related keyboard shortcuts.

However, if you open an image in Preview, there is no Tool Mode button in the toolbar -- and all the tools in the Tools menu are unavailable, except for the Select Tool. So here's the hint: if you press the space bar, the Select Tool will switch to the Scroll Tool, which I tend to refer to as the hand tool, since that's what its icon is. You can then grab oversized images and 'scroll' them around via dragging. Presumably this keyboard shortcut is referenced from Photoshop, which has long used the space bar as a quick keyboard shortcut to the hand tool.

Also, this tip is in reference to Preview 3 in Tiger. I don't think previous versions of Preview split the toolbar capabilities between images and PDFs.

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