Many of you know about QuickLook functions. For those of you who don’t know about QuickLook, here is what QuickLook is:

QuickLook allows you to take a sneak peek of entire files, including multiple documents and video, without having to physically open them. To do this, you just select a file in Finder and press the Space bar. You will then see a transparent window, showing you the contents of the chosen file.

You can also use QuickLook in Apple Mail. This is used for messages that contain attachments. To view an attachment without having to physically open it, just click on the Quick Look button.  You can even use Quick Look to view photos as a slideshow.

Quick Look works with most files on your Mac. These include images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to name a few. To view files, simply select the file and then hit your Space bar. You can even open the file from within the Quick Look window by double clicking and view a file in full screen. And you don’t even have to have the application that the file was created in to view.

Another really cool feature is that you can also listen to mp3s and .avi files by clicking the space bar and it will play.

To close the Quick Look preview, just press the Space bar again, or click the x in the preview window’s upper-left corner.

Here are a few tips from the Apple web site to get the most out of Quick Look:

• If you want to view more items, don’t close the preview window. Highlight a new file in the Finder, and it will be the next displayed item. You can use the up/down arrow keys to view the previous/next items.
• You can also view multiple-page documents in Quick Look. For files that are multiple-pages, you will see a navigation scroll bar along the preview window’s right margin.

There are also a variety of Quick Look plugins available on the Internet. Two really good directories with the best free Quick Look plugins are:

www.quicklookplugins.com

www.qlplugins.com

Here are the Quick Look plugins that I currently use:

BrushViewQL

BrushViewQL allows you to see the contents of Photoshop brush files.

ColorXML

ColorXML QuickLook is a simple QuickLook plugin which enables the display of XML files with indentation and XML syntax coloring.

QuickLook Folder View

Folder View allows you to see the contents of a folder using Quick Look. Just click on any folder, hit the Space bar and Quick Look will display items in the folder.

SneakPeak Photo

SneakPeak Photo displays detailed information of photos. On the top of the Preview window are basics like the type of file, its size, f-stop, focal length, color Sfile (sRGB, ProPhoto, etc) and a mini histogram. You will also see buttons which display Exif data, all the camera settings, a Loupe View with high resolution zooms and a larger Histogram to see the blueprint of your shot. If your photo is geotagged, you will see the coordinates and a nifty map of where the picture was taken, along with a link to a more detailed map online. This plugin costs $9.95 and there is a free trial available for download. Click on the icon to go to their website.

SneakPeak Pro

SneakPeak Pro allows users to view Illustrator, InDesign, Swatch Exchange (ASE), EPS, and Freehand documents in Quick Look.
You can also view fonts, images and colors used in many CS3 and CS4 documents. You can preview your graphic files in Cover flow, see previews of graphic documents within any open dialog box, and much more.

This plugin costs $19.95 and there is also a free trial to download. Click the icon to be directed to their website.

I have found Quick Look to be really useful but adding the plugins mentioned above make it even more useful. If anybody has any other plugins, experiences, or ideas about Quick Look or plugins for Quick Look, please feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.