Inserting Clip Art In A Pages 09 Document

Two easy ways:

1) directly from the Finder. Open a Finder window with your clip art. Set the Finder view to Icon view, or even better CoverFlow view to look at your clip art files. When you find one, drag it from the Finder onto your Pages document window. Taa Daa!

2) A lot of people I know have chosen to store their clip art in iPhoto because Apple has created such an easy way to view and move graphic files using the media browser. My wife has chosen this method.

Third easy way:

Insert menu > Choose… (⌘ ⇧ V) > navigate to desired folder. Pages will remember the folder you choose (at least until you quit Pages).

John,

Just to let you know Pages does not use .wmf and .pict is mostly history now.

*The main formats that Pages will use are:*

.jpeg, jpeg2000, .tif, .png, .gif, .pdf and .ai saved with .pdf preview.

Of the *Nova Art Explosion Clip Art* the most useful will be the vector .eps files which Pages will convert to .pdf when imported.

*Best is to open and convert the .eps clipart in Preview*

Which does several things:

1. It converts them to .pdf

2. It converts them to color managed cmyk

3. It shrinks the image selection to the image's bounding box ie gets rid of all the background and only selects the image.

4. As long as there is no opaque background drawn as part of the clipart, you will have a transparent background.

5. It will save the file as a very small .pdf file

6. The pdf file will be viewable in Finder on the *Icon Preview* or in CoverFlow, also when you view it in your *Open dialog box*.

*There are 4 ways to import the clipart*

1. Drag and drop it into Pages from Finder.

If you drop it into text it will become an inline graphic and act as it it was a character in the text, moving with the text.

If you drop it on a non-text area it will create its own image box and fill it.

If you drag it onto an image placeholder box it will either neatly fit into the image box or be cropped, however the box has been set-up.

2. You can use +Menu > Import > Choose… > browse to image > select > OK+ This will drop the image into the middle of your page view at its original size in its own image box.

3. You can make a collection of clipart in a named folder then drag that folder into the top pane of the Media Browser:

+Menu > View > Show Media Browser > Photos+

When you click on the folder in the Media Browser the contents will be displayed in the preview window underneath from where they can be dragged into the Pages layout or onto image boxes.

4. Pages has something called Shapes which you can add by going to the Shapes menu on the window Toolbar. These are native Pages drawings. They can be scaled, colored and contain text or images which are cropped by the shape.

Right at the bottom of the Shapes menu is a pen tool which lets you draw your own shapes, however it is one of the worst drawing tools I have encountered on the Mac.

Shapes can be imported from .svg files. .svg is an open vector or vector + bitmap file format readable directly in most *Web Browsers*. Unfortunately they are not directly supported in Pages, but they can be imported using svg2key into Keynote as shapes, from where they can be cut and pasted into Pages.

OmniGraffle has sets of clipart called Stencils, these can be cut and pasted into Keynote and possibly into Pages, but requires you to have a copy of OmniGraffle on your machine.

A great deal of commercial and free clipart is available on the Net, much of it substantially better than the crude, cheap looking Nova material which was mostly "sourced" from PC clipart nad has that sort of style and color palette.

ClipArt can be very good and can be very bad, make sure you select the appropriate style and format for your work. You can scour through the Nova collection for the few good examples and make your own selection converted to useful formats such as .pdf and keep them in labelled folders which you can then select from previews using large *Icon View* or CoverFlow in Finder.

You can also copy and paste clipart from AppleWorks.

Peter

dwb,

There is a problem with storing clipart in iPhoto, it will not accept vector artwork, including the supposedly OSX standard .pdf.

Peter

John,

Don't convert the .eps to .jpeg!

.jpeg is for photo style graphics.

Convert them to .pdfs.

.pdfs are the ideal format, especially as the file formats are previewable, tiny, fast and and very efficient. Also when you enlarge or shrink them they stay perfectly sharp.

Please the answer to everything is NOT .jpegs!!!

Peter

Peter is quite correct - keep the files as EPS - assuming they have thumbnails you can simply view them in the Finder using CoverFlow. If not you can convert them to PDFs which will have a thumbnail and still keep the size independence. Once you convert an EPS file (which is a vector file) to a bitmap format (such as JPG) you have just stamped in stone that graphic's maximum size and probably also jacked up the filesize of the image as well.

dwb wrote:
… and probably also jacked up the filesize of the image as well.

Not probably. The file size difference can be huge.

.pdf files are often only about 15-50k, sometimes less depending on subject, and stay sharp no matter what.

The equivalent .eps can be Mb/s and will also stay sharp but at best has a crude bitmap preview or none.

A converted .jpeg will be blurry and lack detail when enlarged and will be from 100kbs up to Mbs depending on the size and quality. It also has no transparent background.

By all means make your own tests but the principles and conclusions are clear.

The best format for vector files:

For flat areas of color or black & white images are .pdfs converted by Preview. These are often tiny files and remain fully editable.

For files with multiple blends and meshs .ai files saved from Illustrator with .pdf preview. These are bigger but maintain full editability whilst retaining all the benefits and features of .pdf files.

Peter