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I have several PNG images I want to view as a single document in Preview, Lion OSX.

Usually I just select several images and open them in Preview, but when I do that, I can't set the view to "Continuous Scroll."

The default behavior for PNG images in Preview seems to be to zoom out after you flip a page, meaning I have to resize every page scroll down. That gets tedious.

Is there a way to put these PNG images together in one, single Preview document so I can select "Continuous Scroll" as an option and don't have to resize each page?

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    Are you requiring that they be merged in Preview (as opposed to some other app/script/etc), or does it not matter how they are merged as long as you can use Continuous Scroll?
    – TJ Luoma
    Sep 23, 2011 at 19:21
  • It doesn't matter how they're merged, so long as I can use "Continuous Scroll." I'll add that in the description.
    – Dante
    Sep 24, 2011 at 7:35

3 Answers 3

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Ok, here's what you need to do:

  1. Open up the first PNG image in Preview. Make sure the side bar is showing.

    screenshot

  2. Open the second image in Preview, and from the sidebar, drag the thumbnail image from the second window to the first window's sidebar.

    screenshot

  3. Now, you'll notice that the title bar says "2 documents, 2 total pages." Continue dragging images into the first image until all the images are combined into one PNG. Make sure you save it. :-)

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  • It works on Mac OS X 10.7 too. I had an application that was interfering; that is the reason I reported it was not working.
    – apaderno
    Sep 18, 2011 at 19:04
  • My question had a bit of a caveat in it. I know how to combine PNG images together in a document--I want to know if it's also possible to set a document with PNG images to "Continuous Scroll" mode so I don't have to resize every page as a I scroll down. The default behavior is to zoom out as far as possible every time I switch pages.
    – Dante
    Sep 18, 2011 at 19:31
  • @Andrew Could you crop them? I know it isn't the best solution... I also don't know how many PNGs you have, but I believe you can do a batch crop.
    – daviesgeek
    Sep 20, 2011 at 4:10
  • Could you expand a little more on that? I don't understand how batch cropping would help. And I don't mean that in a snarky sort of way. I'm genuinely interested in any kind of solution.
    – Dante
    Sep 20, 2011 at 6:18
  • @Andrew Well, if you did a batch crop on all of them, you wouldn't have to resize all of the PNGs on each page as you are reading them. Would it be possible for you to upload some of them so I can take a look. Also, it may be helpful to move this to the chat room.
    – daviesgeek
    Sep 20, 2011 at 16:16
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You can drag PNG files as pages into a single PDF file. If you pick one of your PNGs in Preview and export it as a PDF, you can then drag the proxy icons of the others into the left-hand page preview bar and they will be (nondestructively -- the originals are preserved) added to that file. I don't know if that will make your previewing easier or not, but it's an option.

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  • Tried it. Didn't help that much. I still have to resize every page that isn't a .png image, and so I can't go through it as "Continuous Scroll."
    – Dante
    Sep 12, 2011 at 6:54
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Ok, well this is way too obscure of an answer because a) it involves Terminal and b) it involves installing 3rd party software in Terminal.

If you install ImageMagick from the official site and then go into Terminal:

montage "$F1" "$F2" -tile 1x2 -geometry "${TARGET_WIDTH}x${TARGET_HEIGHT}+1+1" out.png

where F1 and F2 are files, and "TARGET_WIDTH" is the widest of the files.

The file "out.png" should be a combination of F1 and F2… you should be able to add more "F3" and other files.

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  • I don't mind installing third-party software or even going through Terminal, so long as it's not too tedious. What does this do to the files though? Could you clarify a little more on that?
    – Dante
    Sep 26, 2011 at 2:59

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