I have been exploring digital scrapbooking as an
alternative to having tons of papers, stickers,
do-dads and scissors laying around. Has anyone else
tried this using Pages? Most of the digital
scrapbooking sites recommed using photoshop or other
programs I would have to buy... I don't have money
right now for that and would like to try doing a 12 x
12 page layout. Does anyone have any ideas, tips or
hints?
Well, one thing about Pages is that it can do layouts for the sizes you want, but you may have some difficulty actually printing something that is 12 inches by 12 inches. Most printers will only print on Letter (8.5x11 inches) or Legal (8.5x14 inches) Some printers may go to Ledger (11x17 inches) but most home printers cannot.
Pages will let you place items rather handily on the page, and include text inside or underneath. Especially handy when labelling what it happening or who it is happening to in the various photos. Something to consider is using the Shapes tool for 'cutting' around your various photographs. Basically, since a shape can have an image fill, use that to hold your photographs. You are not constrained by the limitations of square shapes.
If you are looking for more shapes, there are several people who are working with arcane programs to build Keynote themes. Keynote themes which can be fully customizable. The details behind the programs are somewhat difficult to understand, but one you may consider for creating shapes is <a href="http://www.eazydraw.com/whatsNew.htm"Eazydraw</a>
Eazydraw is not easy to use for doing complicated things (in fact, it is one of the quirkiest programs I have ever used) but it has a whole slew of easily definable and adjustable shapes. It also can export images as a Keynote file. Shapes on a Keynote slide can be copied and used in a Pages file.
To get yourself familiar with the whole Keynote to Pages thing, I was working on an alteration of the Apple Fun theme, included with Keynote. It has user-adjustable photo cutouts, frames for images, and you can even adjust the color of the stars if you want to. When you see what you want, copy it from Keynote and paste it in Pages. Mostly the shapes will work for your needs. Some of the other items may not.
<a href="http://pagesuser.com/content/view/24/53/"You can download that Keynote theme from here. It will only be available until January 1.</a>
Shiney iMac G5 with iSight & many cool hats Mac OS X (10.4.1) Dying ibook G4 with cranky tendancies
