I usually just use QuickLook. Select the first photo in Finder, hit the spacebar and then the up or down arrows (or sideways depending on your Finder view).
That is a job for iPhoto, not Preview. However, Preview can do it easily. Simply select all of your photos in a particular folder, drag them to the Preview icon, and drop. Thumbnail views will appear in a sidebar. You will see one full-resolution photograph at a time. You may use up-arrow and down-arrow to navigate your photographs.
That said, this is not Preview's purpose. iPhoto's purpose is to manage photographs. Browsing photographs is its most popular of its many functions. Like Preview, it is already on your Mac. It is right there in your Dock at the bottom of the screen.