Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: (8) - adding a holly pattern

Holly tree leaves with red berries are often used in Christmas decorations and on cards. I am lucky to have a huge holly tree just down the lane. So, today, on a sunny frosty day I walked there and picked a few twigs. 

Let's see how to work them into the cards we've already created. Come back in a while and have a look. For a clue read this previous article on I work in Pages.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa's Cap (7) - background and message

Here is a rough draft of a Christmas card with the Santa cap we created in previous posts.

For background I used last year's photo of my garden on a snowy day. Choose blurred picture frame from the drop-down menu in Graphic Inspector. Then add a second, outer red frame by importing another rectangular shape (no colour fill.)

You can choose a fancy font from your fonts collection, but it's fun to create your own letters with Draw Tool. Just click the shape of a letter, on average it takes three to four clisks to write each. Remove colour fill. Choose between Sharpen path and Smooth path. You may find that some letters, with curves,  look better with Smooth path, while others, consisting of strokes and angles, are more appealing in Sharp path. Adjust sizes and shapes of the letters by editing shapes - move dots and propeller handles to change curves. Dots on the 'i' and under the exclamation mark are ovals from the shape menu.

Pages'09 have a larger selection of lines and frames, so play with them if you have the '09 version, but good results can be achieved with Pages'08 too.

I described in more detail how to 'write' letters and numbers here.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa's Cap (6) - cheating

You can draw the cap from scratch, but of course there is an easier way.

Take a ready image from an old card, scan it or take a photo of it, or find one on the internet, drop it into your Pages document and then trace the elements of the image with the Pages Draw Tool. This works much like  tracing paper and pencils. Then colour the elements, edit them, group or make a PDF, JPEG or PNG file to use separately.

This little bit of 'cheating' makes the work much easier.

Here is another Santa's cap I drew. There are five elements: the pompon, the band, the main body of the cap in lighter red and two darker shapes inside. Feel free to reuse it as a clipart image or try to recreate it in Pages by tracing the contours with the Draw tool.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa's Cap (5) - put it on the head

Now the exciting stage. Take the photo and import it into your Pages document. Next drop in Santa's cap.

As you see there is a white backgroud around the cap. We need an alpha image, with no background (or transparent background). That's where the Instant Alpha tool comes in. It is under Format menu. Or, depending on how your Pages are customised, in the tool bar.

Select the cap, choose Alpha Tool and your cursor turns into crosshairs (little plus sign). Drag it over the white background several times - and presto, it becomes transparent. Hit return to save Alpha's work.

 

Now we move the cap on top of the head. If for some reason the image slides under the photo, use Arrange menu to Bring it to Front. Drag the image with cursor or move it with keyboard arrows. Press Shift to move ten points every time you hit an arrow.

When the cap is roughly in position, resize it or the photo, or both to make it 'fit'. Try flipping the cap from left to right in Metrics Inspector. If you have two people in the photo, you may want the pompon pointing in opposite directions, use flipping to achieve this.


To rotate the cap, press Command and drag one of the 'handles' of the selected image.

Here you may find that hair, jewelry or the background of your photo gets in the way. Use Mask or Mask with Shape (under Format menu) to hide parts of the photo you don't want on your card. If you choose Mask with Shape, remember that Masking Shape can be made editable (Format>Shape>Make Editable) - red dots appear, move them to mask exactly what you want, rotate and extend the 'propellers' on each dot to make the mask contours curve how you want them to.

When you are satisfied with the results, save the file  - and let's see what we can do next.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa's Cap (4) - making clipart image

Before we put Santa's hat on the photo, we need to make the three main elements of the image stay together while we move and resize it.

We can select all the elements and then Group them together under Arrange menu. That way the cap will move as one object.

But if you try flipping it, copy-pasting or resizing you will see that elements shift or proportions get distorted.

To make a reusable and flexible clipart image make a PDF or JPEG image. Open print dialogue (Command+P) and in choose format from the drop-down menu in the bottom left corner. Or press Command+Shift and type 4 - cursor will turn into crosshair, drag it over the cap and let go. Camera shutter will sound and you get a PNG file.

Now we have our own original clipart image. Feel free to use one from this blog or send me yours - I'll put it here.

Next I will be putting the cap on photos. Come back soon and see how.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa's Cap (3) - the top

To draw the top of Santa's cap use the same technique as for the band (see previous post): use Draw tool to make the main shape and then add creases as separate shapes - lines. 

Choose colour fill and remember to Smooth Path under Format menu.

You have several elements now: the pompon, the band and the top. I am showing them here as separate elements, but of course, it is easier to draw them together, as one image consisting of several shapes and then to adjust and edit them so that they fit together.

Next, we will put the cap on the photo. Come back soon to read the next post.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa Cap - band (2)

Use Draw Tool to draw the shape of the white band on Santa's cap.

Click on Shapes in the document toolbar and slide down to the last option. Click continuously until the shape is ready, then click on the first dot to 'close' it. Choose colour. At this point the shape will be jaggedy. To smooth the curves go to Format Menu, slide down to Shape and then to Smooth Path.

If you are not satisfied with the contours of the shape you can edit it: click on the shape twice, slowly, not double-clicking, when red dots reappear, click on them one  by one to move. If 'snap to grid' function is on, moving dots will try to 'jump' to align themselves with the others. It may be annoying, so disable snap to grid temporarily by pressing and holding Command while you move the dots.

Use 'propeller' handles on dots (they appear when a dot is selected) to adjust the curves. 

When you are done add two black lines for creases in the cap. Use Draw Tool again, but when the line is finished double-click on the last dot or hit Escape. Set colour fill to none in the Graphic Inspector. Go to Format menu again and Smooth Path. Move the 'creases' in place. If the 'slide' under the main shape, go to Arrange menu and Bring the to Front.

Next, I'll be making the top of the hat, come back in a while and see how to make it.

Let's design a Christmas card in Pages: Santa Cap

Jennifer Grainger, a reader of this blog, has asked for help in putting a Santa cap on the photo of herslef and her husband. She is designing a Christmas card in Pages.

I put one on a good friend of mine (right) and on myself (below left). Follow me as I make the cap and put it on our heads.

First, let's make the pompon.

Click on Shapes in an open Pages document and choose the circle.
Add a picture frame fame to it, set width at 3 points, click colour fill and choose colour, here I've put gradient colour going from white to light grey.

Let's leave for now and design the rest of the cap. See next post shortly.

Design a holiday greeting in Pages

With the holiday season approaching many of you will be looking for ways to do greetings projects. Pages is a fun tool to accomplish them - with all the family taking part.

Clipart is one way of designing a greeting card. But there are tools in Pages that let you design your own original holiday greeting. Here, I have put together a list of posts about tools, techniques and tricks that can help you design an original greeting. (The apple image top right  is designed in Pages, read how to here)

It seems that many Pages users are simply unaware of the power that Draw Tool gives. It is not just curving lines you can create with it,  with drawing tool you can do exactly what it says - draw. And 'write' too. In fact, you can create your own full alphabet in any language - and original cards and drawings. I have published several articles here on various uses of the drawing tool.

Here is a list of posts about curving lines and irregular shapes:

Curving lines and shapes - make them in Pages
Doodling memorable dates in Pages
Creating clipart and original shapes in Pages
Designing D-Day map in Pages
Doodles: Picasso's room
Jigsaw cutouts with Pages
Christmas graphics and clipart: a few easy tricks
Valentine: make your own in Pages
Drawing letters and numbers in Pages: Happy New Year
Yes, we can: drawing in Pages
Keeping your lines straight
How to design folders
Maps in Pages


Please feel free to send me your own ideas, questions and links to what others do with Pages.

How to add curving points to a custom shape


A reader of this blog is asking: Let's say I made a shape with curves, but then I wanted to add more points to it, how do I do that?

 

This is how:


- press and hold Option (alt) key and move cursor over the border of the shape at the point where you want to add a new point

- when the cursor turns into the little pen with a plus sign next to it click on the border and you get a new point

- the point is a white circle with red border which means it is ready to be moved and take part in changing your curves

- when you finish click outside the shape.

To delete a point just select it by clicking twice, slowly, not double-clicking, and when it turns white hit Backspace or Delete. 



You may find that deleting points is more useful than adding new ones. When you create a Custom Shape with smooth curves, you may find that fewer points make it easier to achieve exactly the curve you want. On the other hand, when the shape must have a very particular contour, e.g. a map, adding more points does help.


Whenever I use draw tool I can't help but feel a little bit nostalgic. It reminds me of technical drawing classes we had at school back in the early 70-s.  We used to spend hours making complex curved shapes by connecting dots manually with a pencil and a tool called French curve (photo by Radomil Talk). By sliding the tool this way and that you had to find the right curve to connect three dots, then add another one, and again, looking for a connecting curve. Some of us were actually driven to tears... With computer aided design it's all but history. Still, even now I find that the skill learnt in those classes helps me, even though many of us thought it was completely useless.

It seems that many Pages users are simply unaware of the power that Draw Tool gives. It is not just curving lines you can create with it,  with drawing tool you can do exactly what it says - draw. And 'write' too. In fact, you can create your own full alphabet in any language - and original cards and drawings. I have published several articles here on various uses of the drawing tool. With the holiday season approaching many of you will be looking for ways to do greetings projects. Pages is a fun tool to accomplish them - with all the family taking part.

Here is a list of posts about curving lines and irregular shapes:
Curving lines and shapes - make them in Pages
Doodling memorable dates in Pages
Creating clipart and original shapes in Pages
Designing D-Day map in Pages
Doodles: Picasso's room
Jigsaw cutouts with Pages
Christmas graphics and clipart: a few easy tricks
Valentine: make your own in Pages
Drawing letters and numbers in Pages: Happy New Year
Yes, we can: drawing in Pages
Keeping your lines straight
How to design folders
Maps in Pages


Please feel free to send me your own ideas, questions and links to what others do with Pages.

A logo in PNG comes out fuzzy: what can we do?

Check the following:

- Size of the file (logo) in KB and its DPI count. Most images on the internet have low sizes (30-50 KB) which helps fast loading. These small sizes come out blurry in print even when the DPI (or pixel) count is 300, the standard DPI count for professional printing. To achieve good print quality you need a chunky file of 400-500 KB at least. See if you can get the logo in larger KB size from whoever made it originally.

If not try processing the PNG file via Distiller separately BEFORE importing the image into the Pages document. Then import the logo in PDF. PDFs are crisper and retain image quality better then other types of files when you resize images. You can check DPI count in Acrobart or in Preview under Tools menu or press Command+i.

- Downsize PNG image (e.g.from 4x4 to 2x2) and Distill it in that size. Then try increasing the size of PDF (from 2x2 to 4x4)

- Shadows. Check if your PNG image has shadows. Pages sometimes struggle with shadows producing blurred effect. If you can, remove shadows altogether, or increase the Wrap count around the logo to the largest possible, it may help.

- Check Distiller settings. DPI count is the most important setting - it should not be below be 300. The settings I give in this previous article have provided me with consistently good results.