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July 28, 2005
System Preferences | How to zoom in on the screen
Want to quickly zoom in on something that appears on your screen? A small, fuzzy CCTV image, perhaps? This capability is built into Mac OS X. It's designed to help visually impaired users, but it can come in handy for anyone.
When working with images in Photoshop for example, I now prefer the Mac screen zoom to Photoshop's. With the Mac screen zoom, the view follows the cursor, so unlike Photoshop, there's no scrolling involved. Or when using the living room Mac, (which acts as our TV, VCR, DVD, stereo, etc.) the screen zoom makes it possible to see what I'm doing from across the room, like browsing TV schedules or movie reviews on the web. A wireless keyboard and mouse are somewhat essential in this regard.
So — zooming in CCTV images...
To Enable Zoom
- Open System Preferences
- Select "Universal Access"
- Select "Seeing" from the row of buttons across the top
- Under "Zoom," click the "On" button
To zoom in
Hold down the ALT and APPLE keys and then press the PLUS key (beside backspace)
To zoom out
Hold down the ALT and APPLE keys and then press the MINUS key (beside the plus key)
Granted, the keys may be in slightly different places on a laptop keyboard. And granted also, I'm using Tiger. In your version, the button to turn on Zoom is slightly different.
If you want to make adjustments to the Zoom behaviour, go back to:
System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing, and in the Zoom area, click the "Options" button. Then fiddle with the settings and test it out to find out what they do exactly.
Posted by Brad at July 28, 2005 01:12 AM
Comments
Hey that's very neat! I would not have thought to ask about that but it is fun to play with - I do wish I'd turned it off before sending this comment 'cause it is jumping all over. A fun exercize . When Nan was here she asked me to make it larger or brighter but changing the angle worked. It made me realize that I couldn't. But I could have if I had known how - true of most things I supose.
Posted by: Mom at July 31, 2005 04:28 PM
I just wanted to say thank you for this article. I had accidently turned this feature on and couldn't for the life of me figure out what I had done, and how to turn it off.
I chuckle a little to think of "mac's for moms"... but it's a good thing.
Thanks!
:)
Posted by: stacy at January 13, 2006 02:01 PM
