LostInTechnology

Free Mac PDF Reader: Skim

Posted on 19. Feb, 2009 by Luis Sandoval in Software

As an avid Mac user, I’m sharing with the Lost in Technology audience some very cool tools that I have come across thanks to recommendations, deep research, and pure blind luck. I’m typically pretty open to find ways to do things better if not easier. Anything to make my digital life easier will attract my attention and probably deserves a download. I try very hard to give every opportunity to the applications I download, and while not all of them are successes, I do enjoy the ones I keep.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Mac tools that you should check out for yourself. I won’t say that you HAVE to have them only because I know Mac users are individuals all with their own tastes, but I think you’ll like some of the apps that I post up here. If you know of an app that you’d like mentioned, let me know.  Leave it in the comment section, and I’ll be happy to highlight it for you and the audience.

Enough with the introduction, let’s get into our first recommended Mac tool, Skim PDF reader.

Skim a PDF Power Tool and Paper Saver

If you’re a fan of ebooks or just wish you could find free functional uses for a PDF reader when viewing documents, you are not alone. We all wish our PDF readers would provide tools that are actually useful.  Due to the lack of PDF tools, we end up printing out our PDF documents so that we can annotate them on our own.

This wastes paper on on something that should be easy to do on a computer, but we’ve also just accumulated more junk that will take up space somewhere on our tables or desks along with everything else we have piling up already.  While there are alternatives with high priced applications, Skim does this all for free. Does all what you say?

Take a look at the list of features listed on their website:

• Viewing PDFs
• Adding and editing notes
• Highlighting important text, including one-swipe highlight modes
• Making “snapshots” for easy reference
• Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history
• View all your notes and highlights
• Convenient reading in full screen
• Giving powerful presentations, with build-in transitions
• Handy preview of internal links
• Focus using a reading bar
• Magnification tool
• Smart cropping tools
• Extensive AppleScript support
• Bookmarks
• Saving passwords in Keychain
• Export notes as text
• Automatic download of remote PDFs
• Support for Apple Remote Control
• Interaction with LaTeX and PDFSync
• Integration with BibDesk
• Spotlight support
• Highly customizable

Skim is a fully functional reader, but it also allows for the user to interact with the document by making necessary changes to the content similar to what we would do with it had we printed it out. Not only has it saved time, paper and ink, but you now have one less document to physically carry around with you everywhere you go.

My praise for this application is not solitary, check out this forum where users are commenting on the benefits of having added Skim to their mostly used applications.

Luis Sandoval is a media professional and consultant who shares his insights on social media and technology on his blog The Daily Slackr.

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Tags: Apple, backup, Mac OS, Macintosh, pdf, PDF Documents, PDF Reader, Portable Document Format, Skim, SuperDuper, Time Machine