Drag and Drop Images Straight from the Browser.

UPD: This trick works with the current Pages 8.1 — and with most other Mac applications, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit, Stickies, Notes etc. (August 2019)

This post is to draw attention of Pages users to a simple trick with downloading images from the Internet: click on an image in your browser, hold and drag it straight into an open Pages document.

When 'caught' the image will 'lift off' the web page and show a white + sign in green circle and a black arrow.

Drag and hover over the Pages document and let got. The image will land into the document.

I wrote about this trick in a 2011post and it still works in the current Pages 6.3 version. It saves time and space on your hard disc. You don't need to store all images in Photos (library), they just as well sit comfortably in Pages, and can be extracted easily when needed as a separate graphic file.

Remember to check the copyright status of the image.

note technique pour des lecteurs français: drag and drop est glisser-déposer.

Summertime. (Drawing in iWork)

Here is another design I made dreaming of a good relaxing summer.

It consists of several overlapping shapes. The woman's body is one continuous line with a number of editing points. The left hand is a separate shape and so is the hair. Shapes have gradient colour fill. The Sun on the right is an earlier design (see here).

The larger shape has image fill instead of colour fill.

In the picture below you can see the editing points. You can add (Command+Alt and move cursor over the contour of the shape, let go when pen with plus sign appears) or delete (select an editing point and hit delete) as many points as you like.

In this close-up you can see the curving handles of an editing point. Click on the tip of the 'propeller' and drag to change the curves of the shape.

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+ 

Common PDF export problems in iWork/Pages

A reader writes:

I've made several scientific posters in Pages '09 and now want to share them with colleagues for feedback via PDF files. I have found that no matter how I export them (print to PS then save as PDF, or direct export to PDF, or print to PDF), some images become really poor quality and some Pages features (like shadows and frames around images) are missing in the PS or PDF versions. I suspect the image quality may have to do with the fact that I'm working with images people sent me already imported in a powerpoint file (and for the final versions I would obtain the original images), but the issue of dropping some of the Pages specific formatting seems strange. Any ideas? - Wendi

Wendy, hi,

- First of all check the quality of the original images without any iWork/Pages features. Open them in Preview and check info. Good quality images should have DPI of 300 or above in real dimensions. A small image may have 300 DPI but when you enlarge it the count may drop.

- Assuming you use Acrobat for producing PDFs, check Acrobat settings for PDF, you may have to change them to a higher setting.

- Some of the picture frames in Graphic Inspector (the ones that look like old-fashioned photo album frames) just don't work at high resolution in large dimensions. But if you want to achieve a similar effect in high resolution, create your own frames as objects using the Draw tool or find a high resolution photo of a framed picture/painting and put your image inside the frame by superimposing your image and adjusting dimensions of your image to fit inside the frame.

- Shadows have given me a lot of headache too. When I use them I make sure that any text in the document is well removed away from the shadow, otherwise it comes out fuzzed on PDFs.