Set the Background Color of Preview to Match Your Blog
I often use the Instant Alpha tool in Preview to quickly extract transparent images for use on MacMembrane. It’s quick and really easy to use. But sometimes it takes a few passes to get the image just right, and moreover it’s happened that I’ve uploaded an image to my blog image directory only to find that, against the background color of my blog, unwanted areas of the image have not been totally knocked out. It’s an annoyance having to take my image back into Preview to try again, not to mention having an indistinguishable duplicate in my image directory.
A quick solution I’ve found to greatly reduce this occurrence is to set the background color of Preview to that of my blog. This way, if some unremoved piece of background doesn’t appear against the grey background of Preview but will when seen against the background of MacMembrane, I’ll know it and save myself some hassle. Setting it up is easy.
First open up your blog in Safari. Open Preview and open its preferences by hitting Cmd + , (comma) or select Preferences from the application menu. Under the General tab click on the Window Background sample and OS X’s ubiquitous color picker will pop up. Click on the magnifying glass and then on the background of your blog in Safari. Now Preview will give you an accurate representation of alpha images as they will appear once posted.
Preview is one of those smallish apps included with OS X that packs much more power than it initially lets on. For simple tasks, the speed of Preview can’t be beat. I hope this small tweak helps you out.
