I recently sent a JPEG file to a Windows friend (do you categorize your friends this way too or is it just me?) and she asked me how she could open it because Windows didn’t have an application just for viewing images. It was then that I remembered that we Mac users are truly spoiled by our OS. Apple gave us Preview, a simple application just for viewing images and PDFs, that launches in about 3 seconds and will display most any image file known to man.

But did you know that Preview will do some handy image manipulation also? Click the Tools tab in the Preview menu and see what I mean. You can change the image size and resolution, crop, adjust levels, saturation, exposure and tint and even save the file as a different format. And my favorite use of Preview is for taking shots of my Mac’s screen to use in articles or to send to friends and clients to illustrate how to do something on their Mac.

Want to give it a try?

Press Control-Shift-Command-4 on your Mac keyboard. Your cursor should change to a crosshair. Now click and drag anywhere on the screen to select what you wish to take a screenshot of. Release the mouse button and the screenshot is saved to your clipboard.

Now open Preview and choose New from the File menu (or press Command-N on the keyboard). Voila! Your screenshot is automatically loaded into a new image! If you’re satisfied with it as is, click Save from the File menu (or press Command-S), name it and choose where to save it. You just took your first screenshot!

If you want to take a screenshot of an entire window, be it a Finder window or an application’s window, tap the Spacebar after you press Control-Shift-Command-4 and the crosshair will change to a camera icon. Wherever you move the mouse selects entire windows. Release the mouse button and the entire window will be saved to the clipboard. Again, create a New document in Preview and your window will be in it. Neat, huh?

If you find that you need to adjust the image, click on the Tools menu and you can change size, color, rotate, and flip it horizontally or vertically.