How do you crop a picture on Mac Preview?

Answered by Ricardo McCardle

To crop a picture on Mac Preview, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Preview app on your Mac. If you don’t have it, you can find it in the Applications folder or search for it using Spotlight.

2. Once you have the Preview app open, you will need to open the image you want to crop. You can do this by either dragging and dropping the image file onto the Preview app icon in your dock, or by going to File > Open and selecting the image file from your computer.

3. After the image is opened in Preview, you will want to click on the “Show Markup Toolbar” button. This button is located in the top-right corner of the Preview window and looks like a toolbox icon. Clicking on it will reveal a toolbar with various markup options.

4. In the Markup toolbar, you will see a button that looks like a rectangle with dotted lines. This is the “Rectangular Selection” button. Click on it to activate the selection tool.

5. Once the selection tool is active, you can click and drag on the image to create a rectangular selection around the portion you want to keep. You can adjust the selection by clicking and dragging the handles on the sides and corners of the selection box.

6. After you have made the selection, you can click on the “Crop” button in the Markup toolbar to crop the image. The Crop button looks like a square with arrows pointing inward. Alternatively, if you have a Touch Bar on your Mac, you can use it to access the Crop button as well.

7. After clicking on the Crop button, the selected portion of the image will be cropped, and the rest of the image will be removed. You can now save the cropped image by going to File > Save or by using the keyboard shortcut Command + S.

By following these steps, you should be able to easily crop a picture using the Preview app on your Mac. I have personally used this method numerous times to crop images for various purposes, such as resizing photos for social media or removing unwanted parts from screenshots. It’s a simple and effective way to edit and enhance your images directly within the Preview app.