Opening images in Preview: Is there any way to zoom in incrementally?

[coolio2654]

Hello, all. I have been using and enjoying my mac for many years now, but I have always been rather bugged by this one feature (or lack thereof) since at least 2010: anytime I open an image in Preview, and want to zoom in just a little bit, Preview will instead zoom in way too much, and the inverse is true as well when one wants to zoom out a little bit. Preview seems to only "zoom in" and "zoom out" in very large increments that are not controllable.

Is there a hidden setting somewhere that allows lighter or smarter zooming in/out for Preview, or some 3rd-party developer addon that enables this?

I would be extremely grateful to the community for any help they can give me regarding this age-old issue.

Mac specs: Macbook Pro 2013 retina, 10.11.6

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum.

Can you define "little bit" and "very large increments" for us? when I click on "View" and "Zoom in" or "Zoom out" in Preview the zoom looks to be about 33% or so. I measured the image width on my screen and the delta from one zoom to the next was just that, 33%. To me, that's not "very large" at all. In addition, there is a similar change with CMD+ and CMD- to zoom.

What are you looking for?

 

[coolio2654]

The constant "33% zoom" is an ok default for most situations, but sometimes to make a pdf's text clearer, I only need to make the text "10% bigger", and Preview will overshoot that.

This is a non-trivial issue, since I am trying to read some materials professionally, but cannot set a precise size that is easiest for me to read.

 

[MacInWin]

Can you explain better what the harm is in "overshooting" what you want? And can you explain what you mean "read some materials professionally?" I ask so that I can get a better idea of exactly what you are seeking.

And can you tell us what Mac, what version of the OS and what screen(s) you may have? All of that has an impact on potential solutions.

EDIT: And is it always a PDF that has this overshooting issue? Only PDFs?

 

[MacInWin]

One thought for you. I just opened a PDF, multi-page, in Preview and was able to adjust the size of the image by dragging the lower left corner of Preview to change the open pane. Again, that works as long as the screen is large enough to drag to the size you want/need. And Zoom in/out seems to move less in PDFs than images. So some combination of zoom and drag should work to get just about any size text.

 

[coolio2654]

I have edited the OP with my specs.

I should elaborate something important, in that I try to preserve the blackspace around an image that Preview creates if its windows is larger than the image. Preserving this blackspace is the key difficulty, because it helps eliminate distractions for me on the other sides of the screen. If there is any blackspace, Preview will only zoom in/out in huge increments.

With this pdf, for example, I would like to zoom in just a tad from the first picture, but Preview's default zoom produces the second picture:

Preview: Before, and after zooming-in - Album on Imgur

 

[MacInWin]

The attachments didn't seem to attach.

 

[krs]

I just started to look at thie thread.

Attachment worked fine for me.

To solve the OP problem, I would just use a different application to open the pdf - one where one can select the actual zoom level as a percentage.

I find the "big" steps in Preview a bit annoying sometimes as well, but I use "Preview" in what I think it was originally meant to be - just a quick way to open many different image and pdf files. I don't think one can change the zoom increment easily - maybe in terminal, but nothing that I ever found.

 

[IWT]

I agree that the Zoom in/out goes in steps which might suit you; but as mentioned by Jake, you cam master small or large increases by dragging the margins of the document.

See these two images:



And



Achieved by dragging the margins so that only the centre image is seen as opposed to all 3 - just an example.

Ian

 

[krs]

I agree that the Zoom in/out goes in steps which might suit you; but as mentioned by Jake, you cam master small or large increases by dragging the margins of the document.

Yes....but as Jake also mentioned - that only works until you run out of screen real estate - then you're back into "zoom steps" with Preview.
But if the OP only needs to zoom in "a tad" this might work for them.

 

[zquitzau]

I think OP just wants to be able to scroll zoom with the mouse like you can on Windows... personally i hate that its not a thing on preview because i dont want to click on the button.

 

[pine man]

This post is three years old!

 

[pm-r]

This post is three years old!

Yup.. And Apple still hasn't refined what should have been such a basic quick and easy to use scrolling viewing option or similar right from the beginning of Previews existence...

And the user isn't even allowed to muck about with any possible viewing settings now. :-(

If they ever do get around to adding such a feature it'll probably take maybe 14 steps to implement... that seems to be the new trend and development directions the programmers are told to use...




- Patrick
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