How to Paste an Image Into a PDF With Preview on macOS
The Preview app on macOS is a handy way to edit and annotate PDFs. Unfortunately it is not easy or obvious how to insert an image into an existing PDF page. I recently wanted to do this because I have a PNG image with my signature I wanted to insert into a PDF so I could “sign” it. Preview does have a Signature tool but it does not support using an existing signature image file.
It is possible to paste an image into a PDF page from the clipboard but you must first convert the image to an “object image” first.
Steps
- Open the source image file and target PDF using Preview
- Press the following key sequences:
- ⌘+A (select the entire image)
- ⌘+C (copy it to the clipboard)
- ⌘+V (paste the image on top of the original as an “object image”)
- Click on the object image you just pasted on top of the original image
- Press ⌘+C to copy the new object image to the clipboard
- Click on to target page and press ⌘+V to paste the image into it
Demo
Source: I learned how to do this from this How-To Geek article.