Jpegs Getting Reduced

You left out one useful bit of information. Were the 300 dpi Photoshop files too big to fit the page, or did they get bigger when you inserted them in Pages? If you inserted them at 300 dpi and made them smaller, the resolution should have increased. I suspect they came into Pages at 72 dpi, which is why they were too big for the page, and even though you made them smaller, they are still bigger than the original size.

If you want, for example, a 3 inch by 4 inch 300 dpi image in Pages, it is best to make it 3 inch by 4 inch and 300 dpi in Photoshop, then when you insert it in Pages you can just use the "Original Size" button in the Metrics inspector to get that.

Because it is displaying them at 72 dpi, which is the native screen resolution on a Mac.

If you select one of them and open the Metrics inspector and click the "original size" button, they should return to 300 dpi (and their original dimensions).

Have you tried inserting pictures as TIFFs or PICTs?

My apologies, I tried it with a PNG, not a jpeg, and I usually use PDFs. For both of these, the way I've used them, the original size works the way I said.

I don't have Photoshop to test, so I don't know if the jpegs from it don't embed dpi or size information.

If you know that the width of an image in Photoshop was .15 (inches? I assume there is some unit associated with this number), you can just type that into the Width field of the Metrics inspector (with the image selected, obviously) and hit tab to get the image back to that size. (Constrain Proportions should be checked by default for an image.)

That is not true, Jeff! When I add an image at 300 dpi it is showing as 300 dpi. If I click on the button Original size in the Inspector > Metrics the image will get very large and in 72 dpi.

It is tricky because you have several sizes and resolutions. You have resolution with 72 dpi and size in pixels. This screen shot is from Photoshop

BUT the document size at 72 dpi is appr. 80 by 60 cm! In Pages the same image is only appr 14 by 10 cm and that is the size it has in iPhoto. This image example I have here is 403 dpi originally and it stay like that.

When I use the resize option in Pages it will reduce the dpi to 72. The size of the image change to 409 by 306 pixels. For printing I get good pictures if it is above 200 dpi.

Here is what it looks like in Pages. Pages doesn't change the image resolution but you can't see the pixel resolution here but if you do the math 80,72 / 14,43 = 5,594 , 5,594 x 72 = 402,6

So if your images doesn't print good it isn't Pages changing them, Either the resolution is from the beginning very low or you printer isn't performing well

Well, it is true, Fruhulda, but I might have fooled myself with the PNG that I used. It was a screenshot, so 72 dpi and "Original Size" would be the same thing. I normally use that button with PDFs, which are mostly vector images, and "Original Size" for them is the original dimensions.

I just dragged a 300 dpi jpeg into Pages; it came in at 112 dpi. Using the insert menu got the same result. "Original Size" blows it up to 72 dpi, as you pointed out, so I was wrong about how bitmap images are interpreted.

If it is dragged in a 300 dpi it should stay as 300 dpi!

I've been fighting this problem myself when trying make prototype ePub documents.

We write our documents mostly in Word and then send them out for printing. They are full of screen shots!

So here are our work arounds to publish for portable devices or laptops or home machines.

Pages is buggy; even Apples ePub template has quirks in it.

(1). If we start the document in Pages and EXPORT it as a pdf AND be certain to select SAVE HIGH RESOLUTION image option when it is exported the final document looks grand AND the pages will magnify when you double click on the page. The images will scale up along with the page BUT how grainy they appears depends on their original size and resolution. This is what we need on iPads an other iOS devices.

(2). If we write the document in Word (Windows) then we need to fool with Word's pdfs settings when we save the document. We are still trying to find the correct options. The extra problem here is how we get the screen shots that we need. Some of use PRINT SCREEN and then copy into MS Paint and copy it into the Word document via the clipboard (cut and paste). Some of use SnagIt and just copy the image into Word from the Clipboard (cut and paste). Some of us convert the image in SnagIt to JPEG or PNG and then insert the image.

Most of the time either option works reasonably well when the document is saved as a pdf. Naturally small images don't magnify well.

(3) We take the document from option (2) and open it in Pages. Some formatting is lost and we need to be careful of font substitution. Now we share/export the document with the high resolution image option selected. The document scales well in iBooks and the images seem to retain their clarity when magnified. This seems to work better than simple saving the original document as a pdf from Word.

(4). Use the ePub format. This makes everything easier for everyone. We don't need to worry about what machine our readers are using to read our documents. If our readers have iBooks then any audio or videos that we embed will work and URL's will launch their web browser. (I haven't tried other ePub applications like Nook or Kindle. The Firefox eBook plug-in will read the book but no audio or video will work.)

There are problems doing this with Pages.

1. Sometimes the formatting is lost in conversion and text and images aren't in the correct place.
2. Pages has a size limit of about 11Mbytes per chapter which is very easy to exceed with high res images and videos and audio.
3. This is the worst problem. The images do not magnify well. They look fuzzy. We can't have this. An image must enlarge clearly.

Summary.

For documents that will not need frequent revision or very important projects that need audio, video, URLs or need precise layout, we are going with Adobe InDesign.

For normal everyday use we are still sticking with Word exporting to pdf.

But we are still trying.

I hope that this helps and thank you for explaining Pages image size quirks. I'll look for them in the manual!

I agree, but it doesn't.