How to Add Photos to a Mac Snow Leopard Pages Document

By Mark L. Chambers from Mac OS X Snow Leopard All-in-One For Dummies

Snow Leopard’s Pages application is more than just a word processor. You can add photos and use Pages tools to manipulate, or resize the image as necessary.

You can choose from two methods of adding a picture within your Pages document: as a floating object, meaning that you can place the image in a particular spot and it doesn’t move, even if you make changes to the text; and as an inline object, which flows with the surrounding text as you make layout changes.

Add a floating object: Drag an image file from a Finder window and place it at the spot you want within your document. Alternatively, you can click the Media button on the toolbar and click Photos, navigate to the location where the file is saved, and drag the image thumbnail to the spot you want in the document.

Note that a floating object (such as a shape or image) can be sent to the background, where text will not wrap around it. To bring a background object back as a regular floating object, click the object to select it and click Arrange→Bring Background Objects to Front.

Use the Snow Leopard Pages Media Browser to insert photos.
Add an inline object. Hold down the Command key as you drag an image file from a Finder window and place it where you want within your document. You can also click the Media toolbar button and click Photos to display the Media Browser. Navigate to the location where the file is saved, hold down the Command key, and drag the image thumbnail to the spot where you want it in the document.

If you add an image that appears too large or distorted within your Pages document, you can resize it at any time to correct the problem. To resize an image object, click the image to select it and then drag one of the selection handles that appear along the border of the image. (They look like tiny squares.) The side-selection handles drag only that edge of the frame, whereas the corner-selection handles resize both adjoining edges of the selection frame.

When you hold down the Shift key as you drag, Pages preserves the aspect ratio of the image so that the vertical and horizontal proportions remain fixed.

You can also flip images. Click Arrange on the Pages menu bar to flip the image horizontally or vertically.