Inspired by Bear Grylls's (of Discovery's Man vs. Wild) "make the most out of your situation" scenarios, I present you with a tutorial for making the most out of Preview.app. While not as powerful as graphics editing powerhouse Adobe Photoshop, Preview can oftentimes get you from Point A to Point B -- and sometimes quicker too.

Like Bear Grylls, you'll need to parachute out of a plane and into the house of a friend who doesn't have Photoshop -- just kidding.

First, a little bit of background. Preview comes pre-installed on Mac OS X, and it's the default image viewer on the system. For PC-to-Mac converts, you could think of it as the Microsoft Paint of OS X; except that it can do a whole lot more. Besides the ability to open a host of image file formats (JPG, BMP, GIF, among them, and even PSD and AI files), Preview can also open PDF files natively. I actually prefer it over Adobe Acrobat for opening PDFs, as I find that they open much quicker using Preview. And like Adobe Reader, Preview contains advanced features, such as annotating.

What separates Iris from the competition is the single-screen user interface that dispenses with a lot of the traditional floating palettes that clutter screens with other applications. While it's a 1.0 release, a quick tour of the trial download shows that Iris is a surprisingly full-featured image editor supporting most major file formats, advanced compositing tools, and color correction machinery that lets you fix or enhance your favorite photos.

Iris requires Leopard, and can be purchased from Nolobe for $79. If you'd like to take Iris for a spin, download the free trial.

Photo Drop (not to be confused with the photo batch processor we mentioned a while back) is a nifty Dashboard Widget that promises "10 sec. photo editing." Basically, you drag an image file from the Finder and drop it on the widget (in the Dashboard). You're then able to resize or trim the image and add one of 8 effects (e.g. reflection, rounded corners, etc.). When you're done you can drag the image off the widget back into the Finder, or save it to the clipboard or Desktop. The Photo Drop site has a couple of screencasts to give you a sense of what it can do.

I think the concept of doing simple edits in a Dashboard widget is a good one, but I'd like to see more functionality (e.g. cropping, rotation, etc.). Photo Drop is a free download from dropping, Inc.

[via Cool OSX Apps]

ImageWell calls itself the "the free and lean image editor" and it is, indeed, both free and lean. It's one of those apps that "just works" and doesn't try to do more than it should. We're fans of ImageWell here at TUAW. It makes our jobs easier. Recently I noticed that the ImageWell 3 beta was available for download and I jumped on it like a rabid dog. Guess what? It "just works" even better.

ImageWell rocks for quick and easy edits to images. Just drag an image onto the well, make your adjustments (like cropping, rotating, watermarking and/or resizing) and send the file to the local folder, FTP server or iDisk of your choice. It supports .Mac, WebDAV, FTP and SFTP for uploads. A few simple clicks is all it takes and you'll generally be done with what you needed to do in about the same amount of time it would take for Photoshop to even launch. You can even add text, shapes, thought clouds and balloons with ease without having to launch another app to dress up your pic.

Although the basic application is free, ImageWell now also offers a registered version that includes some additional bells and whistles, like more shapes, styles, gradients, and batch resizing. You can upgrade to the registered version for $9.95 during the v3 beta, but the regular price will be $14.95.

The interface on ImageWell 3 is a bit different than version 2.x. (no more drawers!) and I was a tad confused by that when I launched it - I'm quite the creature of habit. But once I figured out where things had moved to I felt at ease again. The online help and documentation is very good. though, so if you're confused too, just fire up the help pages and you'll be all set.

ImageWell 3 requires OS X 10.3.9 or greater, and is a Universal Binary. If you're looking for a lean and mean image editor, give it a try.

The Gimp isn't the only open source image editor in town. Seashore may be quite basic in its functionality, but it's pleasant to use and the source code is freely available. Seashore employs many of the tools you're familiar with, like the lasso, marquee tool, smudge, erase, position, paint and more. Plus, there are several brushes and textures to choose from. Export options include JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, TIFF and XCF (Gimp). Seashore also supports layers and alpha channel editing.

Seashore is free, universal and requires Mac OS 10.3 or later.

[Via FreeMacWare]

I stumbled across another interesting (and free) image manipulator in Apple's downloads section by the name of ImagePlay. It's actually an open source editor with versions available from Sourceforge for OS X, OS 9 and even Windows, but because of that open-sourceness it doesn't appear to be utilizing all the abilities of CoreImage like ImageTricks does (correct me if I'm wrong). However, ImagePlay does offer a few key features, such as layers, various effects and filters, as well as the incredibly handy ability to offer an estimated file size when exporting various image formats such as JPEG, PNG, BMP (uh, why?), Photoshop, TIFF and even QuickTime.

While it obviously isn't Photoshop, I'm sure ImagePlay can still find its place in plenty of people's Application folders. This handy little image editor is available at either Apple's Downloads section or from its home at Sourceforge for the amazingly low price of $0.