Pages to PNG: How to make transparent files for design uploads

 

Pages - PDF - PNG

Here is a short script for those who dabble in graphic design in Pages, and print-on-demand (POD). 

1 Make your design in Pages.

2 Under File menu go to Export to (Exporter vers... in French) and chose PDF. 

3 Open the PDF file in Preview, the Mac does it by default. 

4 Again, under the File menu slide down to Export (Exporter...) and in the opening window click on the Format menu and chose PNG. Here, set Resolution to 301 pixels per inch, which is an industry standard for professional/commercial printing.

5 Save, open the PNG file and under the View menu open Tool Bar (or Markup Toolbar), in the tool bar click on Alpha, second from left at the top.

6 Drag the cursor over the background, and when the blinking cursive line appears, click delete. You will get a checkered grey background. This is a transparency. Now, check for the white spots inside some letters of your 'slogan' design, like A, D, P, O, B. These have to be 'whiped' out with Alpha too. Click and drag, then click Delete. Once you're done with these, save your file and it's ready for uploading to whatever POD site you use.

Once you get to grips with this, it takes less than five minutes from doing a text slogan in Pages to uploading a ready design for a mug or a tee-shirt. 

And here you can see one of my recent designs on CafePress, one of the top POD sites. I have used the Pages to PNG method described above. 

Good luck with this! 

Free Banking.

'Free [us from] Banking' is another design I've added to my gallery on CafePress. You can see it there on various products, such as t-shirts, bags and mugs, as in the picture here. Click on the picture to see the products with this design on CafePress.

The effect I was aiming at is to have two slogans in one. When you glance at it quickly, you only see 'Free Banking.' When you look again, you see 'Free us from Banking.' 

I put each line in a separate text box which allows more freedom in moving the chunks of text. 

I made the key word 'Free' largest at 180 points, 'Banking' smaller at 144, and 'us from' at 34. The font used is Palatino Bold.

For best results when printing in black type, remember to change the colour to 'true black.' In the Colour viewer (Inspector), click on sliders, choose CMYK and set Cyan, Magenta and Yellow at zero, and Black (K) at 100 percent.

Convert your Pages document to PDF and upload to CafePress.

Running on the road? Put a warning sign on your t-shirt.

Those who read my blog Running with Dogs know about my other passion - running. When running on the road it's important to make yourself visible to others, warn them that you are there.

Here's a design I made in Pages to go on my t-shirt. It is based on the usual widely recognised triangular warning sign on roads.

The runner's figure is drawn with iWork's draw tool (pen). Behind it is a white triangle, a slightly reshaped Triangle from the Shapes menu. And at the back is the red triangle with rounded corners. I made it from the Rounded Rectangle, which is available in the Shapes menu. I made the  shape editable (Format > Shape > Make editable), then deleted one of the corners and reshaped the triangle.

Click on the picture to go to CafePress to see this and other t-shirts and products with this design. Contact the editor if you want to commission similar.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012), follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+

Sunny on CafePress Designs.

I've put my Sunny design on CafePress. See it on 76 different products including t-shirts and tank tops, mugs, bags, cushions and fridge magnets.

You can buy any of those via CafePress or try your hand at making your own.

See the how-to here, includes my video tutorial.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012), follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+