How do I "Mask" or crop an inserted image?

Hello WStarnes,

you can mask images in Pages very easy, but you have to activate the mask mode after masking or you will resize the image. But masking will not avoid to have the full file size in pages. If you want to have a reduced file size, you have to us an image editor or Preview to do a real cropping.

Here a tut how to mask in Pages:
Make sure the text cursor is not visible (by clicking once near the page border outside of every text area), insert the image and choose the menu item "Format/Mask". You will see the mask rectangle, which you can adjust with the 8 handles around it. After deselecting the masked image, you will see only the mask area of the image. By clicking once onto it you can handle this like every other image (rotate, size, place). But with a double-click on it, you will activate the mask mode, and now you can move the image "behind" the mask area or by clicking onto the mask frame you can adjust the mask area.

This you can do with one of the shapes of Pages, included the freeform shape (menu: "Insert/Shape/Draw a Shape") as well. Make sure the shape lays above the image, select the image and the shape and choose the menu item "Format/Mask With Shape". Of course you can use this masked image as an inline object as well you only have to activate the option "Moves with text" in the "Wrap" inspector.

Cropping:
You don't have to do the following steps if you have the original image. To crop an image you have already inserted into Pages, first open the document package folder to see the image files. Hold down the control key during clicking onto the Pages document icon in the Finder window. Choose the menu item "Show Package Contents" from the appearing menu. A new Finder window will be opened. in it you can see all the media files you have inserted into the document.

Now you can copy the image files you want to crop out of the document package folder or you can use the original images. Open them into Preview, drag a selection rectangle with the position and size you need for cropping and choose the menu item "Tools/Crop". Now save the image with "File/Save as..." as a new one and you can insert it into Pages.

Now you can choose the kind of image part displaying you think of is the best for your document. I hope I could make it clear. If not, please ask again.

Masking/cropping is excellent in Pages. Masking is superior to cropping in that you can undo it at any time. You will also see another advantage to masking, explained below.

Frank has explained the method to mask/crop well. There is one more trick that will save you time, especially in the project you are working on:

1. Mask the object as Frank described.

2. Holding down the option key, click on the masked object and drag it. The object will be copied with the masking intact.

3. Double click on the newly created object to edit the mask to select the next section.

4. Do this as many times as you want.

Kurt

What is the difference between inserting with text cursor visible, versus not visible? If I insert with cursor not visible the .jpeg is the wrong size and is much smaller and comes into the document at an unexpected location. If I insert with the cursor visible, it maintains the proper perfect size, but Format/Mask is grayed out, and I can't see a way to select that?

With the text cursor visible, your object will be placed inline. Without the cursor showing, the object will be floating above the text layer. In the wrap inspector, these are referred to as Moves with Text or Fixed on Page. You can change the behavior of an object on the page by clicking the other radio button in the wrap inspector.

Objects that move with the text don't give you a lot of freedom of placement, but are very handy if you want to put an object in, but aren't finished with the text yet. Any text added above the object will "push" it down along with the text. You can always come back later & make it float. Another advantage some have found, is that Pages will be faster because the text doesn't have to re-draw around the object all of the time.

Tables, which are objects, placed inline will break at a row when it encounters the end of a page. Floating tables are confined to a single page.

There are a number of things you can do with a floating object that you can't with an inline one. Things like wrapping text, masking, rotating, etc.

As for why objects paste in at different sizes, I'm not completely sure. It likely has to do with the resolution of the object. Since resizing is so simple using the metrics inspector, I don't worry about it.

Hello WStarnes,

seems like over night, all questions were answered. But I will explain what Peggy answered already. Pages will insert every image like a 72 dpi resolution image (which is the minimum resolution of a screen; 72 to 92 dpi). This means that a 150 dpi image will appear in Pages as a (nearly) double sized one and so on. Like Peggy wrote, just show the "Metrics" inspector and type the correct size into one number field for width or height.