Use the Built-In Proofreader in Pages

David Schloss — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:12:45 +0000

Everyone’s familiar with spellcheck but did you know that Pages can also help you improve the quality of your documents thanks to a built-in Proofreader tool?

From the Edit menu select Proofreading and then you can bring up the Proofreader… dialog box. Or, turn on Proofread as You Type to have Pages provide proofreading instructions as you’re writing.

Hover Over Words

When Pages finds something that violates basic grammar rules it underlines the phrase in green. Hover the cursor over the green to see the grammar rule Pages is using.

Copy Images from Finder into Pages Quickly

David Schloss — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:22:33 +0000

Pages has a pretty neat trick that speeds up the addition of graphics to documents and page layouts. Instead of having to Place an image into a document, as is the case with many page layout programs, you can simply copy a file from the Finder and past it into a Pages document. If it’s a valid graphic, Pages will place the image itself into the file.

Select a File in the Finder

Find your file in the Finder, in this case we want to paste a screenshot into our document. Press Command-C to copy (or select Copy from the Edit menu).

Switch to Pages

Switch to Pages, where you should have a document open. Press Command-V or (Edit>Paste) to paste your image into Pages.

Jumsoft Kickstarts Pages Lineup

David Schloss — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:34:53 +0000

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jumsoft today announces an addition to its range of premium-quality business templates for Apple’s Pages. The overhauled Pages Templates Expert collection offers the highest quality on the market for a remarkably low price. The line of elegant, consistently styled template packs includes everything from business cards and envelopes to brochures, manuals, and more. Each pack contains the complete kit of documents that reflect different attitudes and styles.

Vilnius, Lithuania – Jumsoft, a developer of applications templates for Mac OS X, today is pleased to announce an addition to its range of premium-quality business templates for Apple’s Pages. The overhauled Pages Templates Expert collection offers the highest quality on the market for a remarkably low price. The line of elegant, consistently-styled template packs includes everything from business cards and envelopes to brochures, manuals, and more.

Like its Pages Templates Pro, an earlier collection of templates for business use, Pages Templates Expert offers clients a unique corporate style of designer quality at a mass-market price. "We put together a set of very modern and functional templates, just as in the other versions of Pages Templates," says Algirdas Unguvaitis, Jumsoft’s general manager. "However, Pages Templates Expert includes a lot more template types – business reports, manuals, posters, timetables, and more. I am incredibly proud of the work that our design team has accomplished over the course of the last several months."

The Pages Templates Expert line includes six packs of templates: Color Fest, Elementary, Enterprise, Living Space, Subtle Mind, and Sugar Hues. Each pack contains the complete kit of documents that reflect different attitudes and styles, which helps users find the most suitable match for their companies.

Color Fest is a captivating mixture of sweet, carefree splashes of color and artistic fonts, great for travel and entertainment businesses. The Elementary templates, designed specifically for schools and other child-oriented organizations, combine a playful yet professional font with clear, bright shades. Enterprise features a solid mix of quintessential business-style fonts and high-tech elements. Living Space provides a warm and welcoming corporate style for real estate businesses. The Subtle Mind pack has a light, airy feel created by a glowing synthesis of blue and white. Finally, Sugar Hues is an oasis of sweetness and delicate charm, perfect for beauty-related companies.

Each pack of Pages Templates Expert includes 36 or more different templates in uniform style with matching type styles. Because most of the templates have multiple layouts, users will receive over 90 different layouts with each pack. Single-page templates such as Letter, Memo, and Poster, were created for basic documents, while several multi-layout templates are perfect for brochures and other publications. The latter group includes a wide range,from a 2-layout Quiz to a 12-layout Horizontal or Vertical brochure. Users can type or paste in their own text, add and remove text boxes, change fonts, drag their photos or pictures onto documents to replace the placeholders, and do much more to create their own style.

System Requirements:
* Apple iWork 08 or later

Pricing and Availability:
Each pack of Pages Templates Expert is only $29 (USD).

Jumsoft: http://www.jumsoft.com/
Pages Templates Expert: http://www.jumsoft.com/pages-expert/

Apple Announces iWork for iPad

David Schloss — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:08:33 +0000

At $9.99 each for Pages, Numbers or Keynote it looks like it’s not all fun and games for the iPad but this keeps you to one device. If you need to do longer typing you can of course use the Keyboard dock – so what are you waiting for? That novel needs you!

iWork Now On iPad

Free (and Beautiful) Pages Templates

David Schloss — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:40:39 +0000

OneEyedGoldfish appeared on our radar the other day while we were looking for good Pages templates and we’re really impressed by their design sense. We were also impressed that they just switched from for-pay downloads to for-donation downloads, a bold move in a business environment like this.

Therea are more than 22 Pages templates, and they’re all free. The company just asks for a donation, making these designs within reach of any designer.

Show them a little support by donating and we’re likely to see many more design sets from them.

Found: Using Pages in Full Screen

David Schloss — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:56:32 +0000

We found this video from AOL UK’s tutorial sites, it’s short but sweet on full-screen in Pages.

http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/apple-pages-use-full-screen-view/2777826069

Removing Double Shadows in iWork

David Schloss — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:00:13 +0000

MacWorld.com is reporting on an issue regarding unwanted single or double shadows on text in iWork applications, and how to fix it. Essentially, the Font panel is getting triggered to display a shadow in some cases without the user selecting this. We haven’t seen this here, but if it’s an issue you’re grappling with, here’s how to fix it.

New utility to Convert PDF files directly to native Keynote & Pages 08/09

David Schloss — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:08:38 +0000

Recosoft Corporation the developer of the
PDF2Office® family of products, PDF2ID® tool for InDesign®, cross platform
file format conversion solutions and PDF converters ships PDF2Office for
iWork v1.0 for the Macintosh platform.

PDF2Office for iWork converts PDF documents into editable Keynote and Pages
‘08/’09 files; allowing for an efficient and transparent process in
recovering and reusing PDF content with in iWork.

PDF2Office for iWork has been designed specifically for the iWork user;
providing a simple and straightforward interface to convert PDF files to the
iWork format; while offering options to fine-tune the conversion results.

PDF2Office for iWork creates paragraphs, reconstructs tables and regroups
independent graphics elements: at the same time it achieves an extremely
accurate layout restoration; ensuing in an effortless PDF document data
recovery and re-use within Keynote and Pages ‘08/’09.

PDF2Office for iWork eliminates the need to acquire and install additional
PDF editing software and tools resulting in huge cost savings in both time
and expense.

Key Features
———————-
* Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard savvy
PDF2Office for iWork operates and supports Mac OS X v10.4 – 10.6; it has
been designed to run under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard seamlessly.

* Convert PDF files to Keynote format
Convert PDF files directly to the Keynote ‘08/’09 file type re-sourcing PDF
content with in Keynote.

* Convert PDF files to Pages format
Convert PDF files directly to the Pages ‘08/’09 file type maintaining layout
fidelity.

* Preset conversion options and fonts
Preset and pre-configure the default conversion options and Font mappings
fine-tuning the conversion process to suit your needs.

PDF2Office for iWork is available immediately in the following
configurations from Recosoft’s online store:

PDF2Office for iWork (Single User license) US$59
PDF2Office for iWork (Family Pack 5-user license) US$79
PDF2Office for iWork (Small Office Home Office 5-user license) US$99

About Recosoft Corporation
Recosoft Corporation is headquartered at Osaka, Japan and is the developer
and provider of cross platform software and information technology
solutions. The company is a leader in designing and delivering PDF
converters and PDF file conversion software solutions enhancing workflow
automation and productivity. For more information on Recosoft PDF
converters, visit
URL: http://www.r ecosoft.com/

Swapping Out Photos in Pages

David Schloss — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:06:31 +0000

Pages comes pre-loaded with quick-and-easy templates you can use to create any sort of document you’d like, from a single page flyer to a multi-page brochure. Each document comes with placeholder photos—high quality art supplied by Apple that you can use, or replace. Here’s how to replace out photos in Pages documents.

PREMIUM MEMBERS

Mac Create Premium Members can download the original Pages document saved as a template with the two new photos embedded from the Premium section.

Select a Template

Open Pages and select a template. In this example we’ll use the Brochure template. `

View the Page

This is the layout of the page with the image provided by Apple.

Bring up Media Browser

Click the link to bring up the Media Browser

Search for Your Image

We’re going to browse through a collection of images in Aperture for this. In the Premium Member version of this article, we’ve included a Template with these images from Aperture put in place.

Double-Click to see Larger

If you’d like to erview your selection before placing it, Double-Click on the thumbnail.

Drag onto Pages

Drag from the Media Browser onto your Pages document.

Page Updates

Your page will update with the new image. However, thanks to that center-of-page graphic, this isn’t exactly how we want the photo to look.

Edit

Double-click the image to edit it. You can edit the Mask, which we don’t want to do here (the mask is the portion of the document that hides the extra edges and is already set up to make the image fit the page right.) You can zoom into and out of the image by dragging the slider above Edit Mask.

Move the Photo

Click inside the photo and the cursor changes to a hand. You can drag your photo around to get the layout you’d like.

Check the Layout

Now we’ve got our image where we want it, let’s just swap out the photo on page 2 as well.

Second Page

There, we’ve changed the image on page 2 as well. All done.

PREMIUM MEMBERS (Copy)

Mac Create Premium Members can download the original Pages document saved as a template with the two new photos embedded from the Premium section.

Create a Photo Cube in Pages 09

David Schloss — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:02:51 +0000

Professional designers have been able to drop photos from media libraries into predefined drop zones for years now, mainly using QuarkXPress and InDesign, but our very own and humble Pages 09 offers this facility.

To demonstrate this I thought I would show you how to create a Photo cube, this is basically a cube with photos on it. They’re a fun object to give to friends and family, you can even make your own die if you like.

1. Open Pages 09
2. Import a photo into Pages 09
3. Draw a square onto your Pages document
4. Mask with Selected Shape
5. Edit Mask
6. Media Placeholder
7. Photo cube crucifix shape

1. Open Pages 09

Start by opening Pages 09 and create a new blank document.

2. Import a photo into Pages 09

The next step is to import a photo into your Pages document. The easiest way to do this is to select Media and Photos, you can then click and drag the photo you want to use.

3. Draw a square onto your Pages document

Then draw a square onto your Pages document. Just select Shapes from the Toolbar and select a Square. There is no need to adjust the default colours and fill as we will only be using this as a mask. Adjust the size of the square by selecting the corners and dragging out to the size you want to use. In this case I am using a 6 cm x 6 cm square.

4. Mask with Selected Shape

With both the square and your photo selected then select Format from the Toolbar and select Mask with Selected Shape. The image will now be cropped within the boundaries of the drawn shape.

5. Edit Mask

If the photograph does not appear in the mask how you want it to appear, just adjust the Edit Mask until you are happy with the positioning.

6. Media Placeholder

To make sure this template is easily reusable, to do this select your masked graphic, choose Format, Advanced and Define as Media Placeholder.

7. Photo cube crucifix shape

Finally, duplicate the square six times into a crucifix shape – make sure each image is ‘Floating’ as can be seen beneath the Toolbar, as opposed to ‘inline’. That way you can freely move the image around to where you want it to appear. That’s it then, you can print it out on Photo paper, cut around and fold up to make a perfect photo cube. Give it a try, it’s really fun and easy to do.

Pages