Clipart: telephone sign

(Emoji and Symbols)

Update for Pages 8.1, Mac OS High Sierra.

The telephone symbol can be found in two ways.

In the main menu at the top of the screen, go Edit > Emoji and Symbols.

This opens a huge collections of various non-letter or letter-like symbols, including the beloved of the internet generation silly faces and cute animals. The telephone symbol ☎︎ is right at the bottom of the window, in the section Sign/Standard Symbols and marked ♻︎ in the speed selection panel at the bottom of the window. By clicking on the double arrow sign there you can skip from section to section without having to scroll down a very long cache of options.

The second, more traditional way is to open the same window by clicking/tapping on the Language/Keyboard layout selection icon at the top right of the screen and sliding, again, to Emoji and Symbols.

Note that this works in Pages and in practically all Mac applications and browsers, including Google Chrome.

This post is an update to my previous articles on Mac clipart and various hidden places where you can find it. Click/tap on the clipart tag to read more. The previous post about the telephone symbol is here, I am going to update and link it to this.

The most recent article here described the Character Palette/Viewer. Now, in the current Mac OS (July 2019), it is replaced by Emoji and Symbols palette (viewer or window, describe it as you wish).  


©Alexander Anichkin. This blog is free to subscribe to but please consider donating via PayPal (button at top right of the blog).

Pages 6.2. The Shapes Library.

See this and other photos of Normandy
on my photo blog.

Aaaa
Apple’s new version of Pages 6.2 released this Summer has, among other new features, a large shapes library. 

Lovers of clipart often complained that there wasn’t enough of it on a Mac. So, here you are with several hundred predrawn clipart-like shapes, or images ready to use or modify.

Make sure your Pages document is set to show the Toolbar. If it isn’t go View > Show Toolbar. In the Toobar click/tap on the green rectangle and the library opens with the basic shapes first, including the powerful but often undervalued Draw tool. Then we have a collection of shapes grouped by topics — objects, nature, animals, business etc.

They are ok to use as they are. Select one, click on it and it will appear in your document.

However, if you want something more eye-grabbing there are many ways to modify the preset shapes. One of the easiest ones is Image Fill — putting an image (a photo) inside the shape.

Here is how it works. 

Let’s go to Symbols section and get a ‘credit card' shape. It looks like this:

1. Drag one of the editing points (little squares seen when the shape is selected) to enlarge the shape.
2. In the Inspector Pane, click on Style. Here you have a selection of different colours for your shape, but go further down to the Fill section, click on the tab under Fill to open the menu and select Image Fill.

3. Now, below you can click on Choose and select a favourite image from Desktop. Click on it to select and then click Open to put it inside the credit card shape.

Another option is to go to your Photos collection. Click on the Photos icon in the Dock to launch the programme. When it opens find a photo you want to go on the credit card and drag it straight from the Photos onto the credit card shape in the Pages document. Here, I've used my photo of a field of wheat with red poppies (©A.Anichkin, 2017).

4. Switch from Photos to Pages and resize the photo by dragging the Scale slider that shows up after the image is imported. 

Reposition the photo inside the credit card by clicking and holding on it. When the little white hand appears drag the photo inside the card until you are satisfied. 

Save — and that’s it!

Christmas Clipart: Santa's Hat with White Background.

1. 
   
   
   Jennifer Grainger, a reader of this blog asks:
   What about layering on an image? For instance, I'm trying to create a Christmas card to print and send out today - and all I want is to put Santa hats on my husband’s and mine heads in the photos. I found a santa hat clip art on google but I can't seem to layer it on our heads, plus, unlike MS clipart - it has the white box around the image.
   
   
   This shouldn't be difficult.
   
   
   - Remove the white background around the image with Alpha tool. If it's not in your tool bar, it is under Format menu. Launch Alpha, click on the image and drag the crosshair over the white background several times. The white ‘box’ will disappear. 
   
   
   - to put hats on your heads (layering) use Arrange menu>Bring to front. The hats will be in the top layer. If you want the tops to point in opposite directions flip one of the images in Metrics Inspector. If hat proportions are awkward, try unchecking Constrain Proportions in Metrics Inspector. That way  you can stretch Santa’s hat.
   
   
   Hope this helps - and Happy Christmas!
   
   
   

Retro Squiggles. Clip art in iWork Pages.

You may be searching for retro squiggles to use in your project.

Have a look at iWork/Pages templates. Musical Poster has a choice of squiggles that create a nice 'retro' effect. Click on the one you like and copy-paste into your project.

If you want to keep it as a separate graphic file, you can extract it from the template by dragging the image icon from the Metrics Inspector.
Click on the graphic element to select it, open the Metrics Inspector, click in the File Info window and drag the icon to the Desktop.

Special characters and Character palette.

Special characters are stored in a place called Character palette.

If you are looking for arrows, pointing fingers, smileys, hearts, telephone icons, scissors, zodiac signs, chess pieces, musical notes, mathematical symbols, Greek alphabet and similar, i.e. the symbols that are not on the keyboard but are frequently used, — that's where to look for them.

Popular clipart-like characters (symbols) are in Characters > Symbols > Miscellaneous Symbols.

To access the Character palette from iWork, go to the Edit menu and choose Special characters...

Edit > Special characters

Find the symbol you need and drag it to your document. It is imported as a letter. There are font variations and you can change the colour in the same way as you change the colour of text.

Special characters (the palette) can be accessed from other applications, including TextEdit and Stickies.

If you want to turn the symbol into a piece of clip art, enlarge it and make a screenshot. If needed, remove the white background with Alpha tool in iWork or Preview.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012)

Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages  

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and add me to your circles on Google+ 

Minimalist Nude 2 (drawing pictures and logos)

Minimalist Nude

A few weeks ago I published 'Nu Minimale', a picture made with iWork's draw tool. The tool sits as the last option in the Shapes menu. It is for creating free-drawn (custom) shapes.

In other words, it's an artist's tool. Look at it as a pencil, a piece of chalk, a brush or a stylus.

To create shapes click several times. Each click creates a dot and each next dot connects to the previous one with a line of default colour and thickness.

To make a closed shape, make a roundtrip with your clicks – and click on the first dot again. To make a line, double click on the last dot.

After the basic shape is created we can edit and modify it.

This is how it works.

Click one-two

Click two-three

Click three-four

Click four-five

Click five-six

And double-click on the last dot. 

Format>Shape>Smooth Path

This makes the line curving instead of angled. 

Choose a line style  

In Graphics Inspector, under Stroke click on Line and choose a line style from the drop-down menu.

Make curves

When you click on red dots – editing points, they turn white and show 'propellers'. Drag, pull out or push in to change the curves of the line. When you drag one propeller, the other one moves too. To move them independently, press Command while dragging. 

Curve the line until it resembles the curves of a body.

Watch an Adobe Illustrator's video tutorial to get the gist of how the curving function works. It's pretty much the same in iWork. 

See earlier post 'Nu Minimale'.

and have a look at 'Obama, Blues Brothers and Picasso'.

In this clip from Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris' Gil stuns Paul with his deep understanding of avant-garde art:

How to 'clip' an image to a piece of paper.

 

- Import a clipart note,
- then insert the image, move it over the note,
- copy-paste the paper clip from Collector’s Newsletter template and position it over the image,
- insert a text box and write your message.

Tip: if you add shadows, make sure they all go in the same direction. Rotate the shadow wheel in Graphic Inspector to align shadows.

 

The picture: Zinaida Serebryakova, Self-Portrait,  1909.

How to make a hand-written note

- Find a clipart image of a sheet from a note-pad, or scan a blank sheet of lined paper, or take a photo of one using the macro setting on your camera;
- Drag the image onto a Pages document;
- Insert a Text box and type your text in it;
- Move the Text Box over the image, Group under arrange menu,
- for additional effect, rotate slightly.

To make the text look like it’s hand-written use italics font variation. Some fonts are designed to look like handwriting, try Lucida Grande Handwriting, Mistral, Santa Fe, Textile, School House Cursive, Handwriting Dakota or Marker Felt. The font in the example above is Lucida Grande Handwriting.

You can use the Draw Tool to create your own original letters and numbers. Read this article to learn how to.

...or make a screenshot of a Sticky note and use it as clipart. The font used here is Handwriting Dakota.