Copywriter, technical writer, translator (FR>EN, ES>EN, IT>EN), journalist

The power of Preview

Sometimes software developers cram more features into their products than most people know about, and they don’t think to go looking for them. Take the humble PDF reader. Not something to get excited about, right? Well, maybe I can change your mind on that.

People tend to open PDFs using Adobe’s free Reader program. A basic piece of software, it now allows you to do several things that could once only be done using paid software. For instance, Reader lets you apply your own signature to PDFs and annotate them using notes and highlights. Other features are available with paid subscriptions.

Mac users frequently skip Reader since the Mac ships with Preview. This program opens PDFs as well as image files, and does a few more things that Reader doesn’t.

Case in point: Preview allows people to:

  • change the order of pages in a PDF
  • insert pages from other PDFs, as well as images
  • combine PDFs

Not too long ago, such tasks sent people to copy shops where they parted with hard-earned money to do this work. Check out the following helpful MacMost.com video to see how easy these tasks are now.