Question about Preview

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Hello,

I'm away from my Mac so can't try if Preview can do this. So I apologize for a stupid question in advance. ;D

Imagine this situation:

On my Windows PC, I have a folder with, say, 100 photos. If I double click a single photo out of these 100, it opens in the default viewer (which may be ACDSee, XnView etc.). Now, I can use certain keys (usually Page Up/Page Down) to browse through the 100 images in the folder, one by one. If I get bored :), I can switch to thumbnail view, which displays the thumbnails of all 100 files.

Can Preview do this? Or does it work in a different (Mac) way like most of Mac applications do?
 
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Open the folder. Select all of the pictures that you want to view. Right click(or ctrl click), then from the menu select "Quick Look XXX items"
 
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...or just click the first photo and press the space bar to show that one in detail, then click the right arrows to scroll through all the images, until as you say, you are bored - see attached:

Screen shot 2011-02-21 at 10.54.52 AM.png
 
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The easiest way is to just DRAG the folder to the dock and drop on Preview. Preview can be used for much more than just a quick glance at an image file when you get out of the habit using it like on a windows machine. To open up the power of Preview I keep it on the dock so it is handy all the time (doesn't have to be open and running). Select the group of files you want to see or just drag the whole folder to the dock and drop on Preview. Preview will open with all the images in a side bar and some buttons will appear on the bottom right. One of these buttons is "Contact Sheet" when you click on it a Slider will appear and you can adjust the size of the thumbnails. By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations too, like Adjust the size or flip and rotate. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. I try to use the features that came on my Mac when possible. I believe they were designed to work well together and I don't need to run a lot of 3rd party software to try and force my Mac to act like Windows machine. Don't forget that "Quick Look" also works well for browsing all kinds of files (images, music, PDF, text and etc). Open Finder in " List or Column view" select a file then hit the "Space bar" and then you can scroll up and down using the arrow keys.

 
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You guys do know that preview is built into the Finder, right? This is the whole point of Leopard. Not sure why anyone has to drag or drop anything. See the image attached to my first post.
 

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This is one of those things that most new Mac users overlook. As a matter of fact some seasoned Mac users are not aware of how Preview works.
 
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It's kind of ironic that seasoned Mac users teach each other bad habits, but criticize switchers for trying do things the 'Windows way'.
 
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You guys do know that preview is built into the Finder, right? This is the whole point of Leopard. Not sure why anyone has to drag or drop anything. See the image attached to my first post.

Before you give out any more BAD information you might learn to use your Mac. What you show in your attached image is not Preview, that is "Quick Look". Drag and Dropping on Preview will give you a lot more options for doing more things with your images than Quick Look. By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations like Adjust the image size or flip and rotate the image. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. You can't do any of this from Quick Look.
 
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Before you give out any more BAD information you might learn to use your Mac. What you show in your attached image is not Preview, that is "Quick Look". Drag and Dropping on Preview will give you a lot more options for doing more things with your images than Quick Look. By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations like Adjust the image size or flip and rotate the image. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. You can't do any of this from Quick Look.

OK, so we're going down Pedant Lane are we? Well sure, functionally Preview offers a few more things than Quick Look, but before you lecture me on how to use my Mac and judge my information as being 'BAD' (caps made that true, right?), you might want to look at what the original poster actually asked.

From your answer, it would seem that the simple workflow of double clicking on an image in Windows and viewing it, had an equivalent workflow of opening an app and dragging multiple files into that app. Not only that, but you said it was the easiest way. It's not - all you need to do is select all of the photos you want to open, and double click on the first one. That's the EASIEST way to do what you described.

Besides, quite honestly the best way to do what you just described is actually in iPhoto anyway.
 
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Well, the OP also asked if Preview could do something like this, and technically it can, BUT... I think we can safely guess that he/she might be looking for the functionality that Quick Look adds. Most people, I wager, would probably associate the word "preview" with what Quick Look does, especially a relative noob coming from Windows.

So it kind of depends on what the OP wants to do... if you just want to preview a file in the Finder, use Quick Look (the button with the eye icon on it in the Finder window) or simply press the space bar. From there you can use the arrow keys to navigate to the next file preview.

And if you want to use the application called Preview to see more detail or edit files in some basic way, then dragging the folder into the Preview icon is probably the easiest way. If you don't choose to use iPhoto, of course.
 
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And if you want to use the application called Preview to see more detail or edit files in some basic way, then dragging the folder into the Preview icon is probably the easiest way. If you don't choose to use iPhoto, of course.

Well your first two paragraphs hit the nail on the head really. The only thing I'd say, as above, is that by double-clicking on an image file in Finder will actually launch preview anyway. Hitting command-a to select all, then double clicking on any image, will open them all in Preview just the way Windows works.

...anyway, I need to go and look at my manual now, so I know how my Mac works! ;D
 

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