Preview: PDF Editor

Following my latest post on Preview of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Preview can also be a “limited” PDF editor which I recently noticed during the preparation of a report for my Company. Limited means not all of the capability of full PDF editor, such as Adobe Acrobat, are stashed away in its menu. But, for all I know, fine Application is the one that provide what you need not provide you everything – and Preview has come with that attitude, at least for my need.

During the preparation of my report, I have to divide my report into several document within three Application: Pages of iWork, Word of Microsoft, and Excel of Microsoft which I have to publish in PDF format thenafter – but these separate document must be compiled into one single document – and it can not be done, at least in my case, in one of the above Application. To complete my report, I also have to “grab” and edit an image from an already finished report in PDF format, which I do not have the “raw” format in doc or pages.

Voila! I found out that Preview can handle all my problem instantly.

1. Crop and save an image in PDF
   Preview’s image editing feature can do this trick easily. To crop an image from a PDF document click Select button in the toolbar, click and drag to create rectangle around the image you want to crop, then select Tools > Crop or press Command+K. Save As into format you like.
2. Merge PDFs file or move pages from single file to another
   it is amazing to have this feature in your hand. Usually, I used to combine several document (e.g. three report with different format which I have to combine into single document) by copy paste into one single document and then create one PDF file from this document. Now, I can just combine them after all report finish. The best thing is I don’t need to adjust any formating in the document – Hey, it’s already a PDF, ready to be distributed. I just need to combine them and re-arrange the page or adjust the orientation.

   To merge PDFs file or append any pages from one file to another you have to open both file you want to merge. Make sure the sidebar is visible. Drag one page (or all pages) from one document’s sidebar to another, and drop it/them in the appropriate location. Done, piece of cake!

3. Delete or re-arrange pages in PDF and insert Blank Page
   You may find that you want to delete certain page or pages in a document. Just press Command+delete on the selected page in sidebar. Again, make sure sidebar is visible. To move page/pages, select the page in sidebar, drag and drop into the desire location. The best thing about editing the PDF using Preview is you can even add Blank Page in the document wherever you like. This will come handy when you have to create a report with transition page on each chapter. Select, in the side bar, the page after where you want to add the Blank Page, choose Edit > Insert Blank Page.

The very best thing about having Preview as an Image Editor or a PDF Editor is it’s already included in Leopard.