# Using Clip Art in iWork (long)



## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

The new iWork suite from Apple is apparently the basis for replacing AppleWorks. One aspect of the replacement has yet to appear - clip art.

Apple has provided no clip art with iWork, not even the limited amount that came with Keynote 1.x. This isn't a problem if you confine yourself to the "picture frame" pages in the provided templates for the two applications of the suite, Pages and Keynote 2.0. It's almost ridiculously easy to slip your own images from iPhoto or elsewhere into the tidy pre-formatted frame boxes.

Perhaps your artistic muse wants you to work outside the box, though. You might like to put a clip-art image into the main window, over top of the template page's nice background pattern, without bringing along a big ugly background rectangle. Here's where the plot thickens.

The best quality clip art that you have is likely vector-based EPS or PICT images. Unfortunately, these images can't be directly placed into iWork, as they can into any professional application (eg, PageMaker, Quark XPress, InDesign, etc.) I have found three ways to convert vector images for use in iWork - each involves using other programs. 

You can open an EPS graphic in the Preview application, provided that it has the ".eps" file extension. Save it as a PDF and it can then be inserted in an iWork doc.

To convert a vector PICT graphic, like the clip art that comes with AppleWorks, open the image in the Draw module (NOT the Paint or any other module) of AppleWorks, then choose "Ungroup Picture" from the Arrange menu. This will select all the paths and fills in the image. Then, Copy/Paste into the iWork (Pages or Keynote 2) document where you want to use the image. Transparency will also be maintained in this situation.

Finally, you can open an EPS, Illustrator or vector PICT image with Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements and rasterize the image on a transparent background at an appropriate size and resolution, depending on the end use of the document (screen viewing or print). You will have to save a selection to create a transparency mask (Alpha Channel) as detailed below.

Not all the art you will want to use is in a vector format. You might want to use a photographic "cut-out" similar to a transparent GIF on a Web page. To accomplish this, you have to very carefully select all the areas of the picture that you want to make transparent when you place the image into iWork, then delete those areas to a transparent background. Finally, invert the selection and save it as an Alpha Channel. The Alpha Channel, also known as a transparency mask, will hide the background elements of the image that you don't want to see. (This is the format of the impressive clip art included with Keynote 1.x.) Several image formats allow saving an Alpha Channel - PDF, TIFF, PSD (native Photoshop), GIF. NOT JPEG, though.

You can use this basic technique in Photoshop CS, Photoshop Elements, or even Graphic Converter. The selecting process is rather fussy, and it may be very difficult to get the exact results you want with some images. With its extremely powerful selection features, the full version of Photoshop is supreme as a tool for this task, but the lesser programs can also be used with success on some images. If you're using Elements, I might call your attention to the Selection Brush Tool.

Someday, I'm sure, Apple will add graphical features to iWork that will make these tasks easier. Meanwhile, you can use the above techniques to get a creative jump on the process.

Cheers :-> Bill


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