Mac 101: Using Quick Look

Mac 101: Using Quick Look: "

Filed under: Leopard, Mac 101

So far as I can tell, practically everybody loves Leopard's Quick Look previewer. For today's Mac 101 I thought I'd share a few tips about using Quick Look.

• First is nice little tip from Mac OS X Hints about zooming in Quick Look. If you invoke Quick Look with the spacebar you can actually zoom in on the image in a couple of ways. You can hold down the option key and use your mouse's scrollwheel/ball (or two-finder scrolling on a touchpad) to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by holding down the option key and clicking on the image, or zoom out by holding shift-option. While zoomed in you can also click and drag to pan the image. Strangely, the same shortcuts don't work with PDFs, but you can still zoom in and out with ⌘ + and ⌘ - (command plus/minus) with the Quick Look HUD selected.
• The second is that you can use Quick Look with more than one file at a time. So if you select several files in the Finder by command-clicking and then invoke Quick Look with the spacebar, you can scroll between the images with the arrow keys. However, there's also a nifty index sheet icon at the bottom that will bring up a kind of contact sheet with the selected files (as above).
• Finally, I know some folks had complained that the slideshow option has disappeared from the Finder's contextual menu. But if you select a group of files in the Finder and then invoke Quick Look you'll also see a play button that runs a slideshow in the Quick Look HUD.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)