Preview Drawer trick: quick way of selecting and importing photos into Pages

If you download pictures from a digital camera, they would likely go into iPhoto. To import a photo into a Pages project you just drag and drop it onto an open Pages document.

However, quite often you will have a disc, or a memory stick sent to you, or a zipped picture folder. There would be a number of photos for you to choose from. You can open them one by one - by default it will be in Preview. You don't need to put them into iPhoto or Media Browser, simply drag and drop the photo from its folder.

Now here is the neat trick number one: instead of opening pictures one by one you can open them all at once.

- Press Command and type A (for All, I presume). This selects all files in a folder.
- Press Command and type O (for Open). Preview will open all pictures in one go: they will be shown as thumbnails in the Drawer. Click on thumbnails to see the pictures and select the one you want to use in your project.

Neat trick number two: pictures may come from different sources and have different technical parametres - some files are big, some small. Go to Tools>Get Info to check DPI, file size and other data to decide if the picture suits you. Clicking on thumbnails gives data for each photo.

Neat trick number three: when you are done with selecting and checking photos, CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL and drag the picture into your Pages document. You may find that this is much quicker and simpler than going through iPhoto or Media. And certainly easier than copy-pasting photos.

The picture here shows a batch of Easter theme flowers all opened in Preview with a Drawer showing thumbnails. The main photo is of traditional Easter catkins (pussy-willow buds starting to flower).

Photos by Francesca Bostock, published in the April issue of the Rendezvous magazine and on the Rendezvous Readers Journal blog.

Please check this previous post about using the Drawer trick in ad design:
Use Preview to update repeated formats

Skip to my Lou: how to select random files

How to skip files when selecting a batch to move from one folder to another? Every macuser knows how to select a group of files or objects - just drag to highlight them. Or press Shift and click on the files you want to select.

But, if you want to select random, not adjacent, files in an open folder, pressing Shift won't help - all the files in between will be selected too.

I've long been frustrated by this. Until I discovered that

pressing Command while selecting the files does the trick.

It helps, for example, when you work on a periodic or regularly updated project, a magazine or a catalogue, and want to resave current documents as templates for the next edition.

Select all (Command+A) and duplicate (Command+D). Now you have a new set of all the pages with 'copy' added in the name of the file. Copies are below the originals. To select just the copies, press Command and click on the copies. Then move them to a new folder or to the Desktop to start working on the new issue of your publication.

The same works in iPhoto. If you select several photos while pressing Shift, all the images in between will be selected too. If you press Command - only the ones you want.

I am preparing a linked list of articles about keyboard shortcuts on this blog and general Mac tricks and tips. Meanwhile please read this previous article:
Look after your hands: useful shortcuts

And, if you are a fan of folk music, watch Pete Seeger explaining how to play Skip to my Lou on banjo here.