Background Images In Pages

You can import an image and use it as a background for a page or your entire document. Learn how to get the image to appear behind text, and to adjust it so your text stands out.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at creating a background image for your documents in Pages.
I'm using Pages version 5 and we're going to take a look at how to add a background image behind your text.
I've got a sample document with some sample text and I have this background that I want to set as the background, not only for this page, but for all the pages in the document. So I'm going to drag and drop it in just to get it into the Pages document.
But instead of just letting it float there on that page I'm going to go to the Arrange menu, Section Masters and move this object to the Section Masters. Now it is in the background as you can see.
So I'm going to scale it up, let's zoom out on this quite a bit, and you can see it. It actually appears there on page 2. I'm going to scale this a huge amount and drag it around, you can see the arrow keys here, so that it kind of covers everything. After I've got it to a position that I want, there we go that is perfect, now I can also begin to also work with it as an image and change some things about it.
I can adjust the exposure, for instance, and saturation to get it like I want. Let's go fully to this Adjust Image here and we'll be able to really play around with its levels because we want it to appear kind of light behind everything and not interfere with the black text.
Let's say this is the effect that we want. Let's go back to the full view here so we can see. Now it appears as a pretty light background on this and we can scroll down and you can see there it appears at the bottom of the text very nice. It is exactly the effect that I was looking for. 
The cool thing is that it will always add itself to the end of every page here. So I can continue to add more text and go to a new page and it will be here on this next page as well. So it is the complete background for my entire document by doing it this way.

Comments: 12 Responses to “Background Images In Pages”

Joel Anderson

11 years ago

Thanks, Gary. Even though I consider myself a somewhat-seasoned Pages user, I never would've guessed or figured out how to do this. I have been recommending your site to a friend or two who are considering making the leap to Apple computers.

Kevin Geerhart

Hi Gary, can this be done in ios7 also?

Gary Rosenzweig

In the most recent version of iOS Pages you can go to Tools, Document Setup and add an image that will then be on the background of all pages. Try it, you'll see. You can also change the opacity of that image to fade it.

Got it! Thanks Gary

Clay

Very nice. A couple of years ago, I tried and failed to find a way to add *different* background images to different pages. Do you know if that is yet possible in Pages? (It wasn't in Word either. Kind of bizarre.)

Thanks, by the way, for being my favorite Mac guru. :)

Just add an image, set it to not cause the yet to wrap, and move it behind everything else.

Phil

How do you put a small image behind some text? For example, putting the image of one's signature behind the text that contains their name so that the part of the image of the signature shows behind the text? I could do that with the old version of Pages, but in version 5, when you add an image to your document and select "None" for text wrap, the "send to back" option is grayed out so the image is always on top of the text. Any ideas?

That only happens if you use the default "body" text box. If you create your own text box, you can put that on top of the image. You can also use Arrange, Section Masters to put the image on the background. Then just make that "section" only one page long.

Thanks for the feedback and the suggested workarounds, Gary. However, I still think that one should have the option to send an image behind the default "body" text box. That's the way it worked in previous versions--I hope this gets fixed.

Kirby Wood

Thanks, Gary, for the excellent tip! I've been following your videos for a long time. Always informative and useful.

Robyn

Thanks heaps Gary...easy when you know how! I look forward to your Newsletter every week and there's always something really good in it. Please keep doing Pages things Gary.

lupe

Gary, thank you soooo much!!! You have done it again! I literally spent like an hour and a half trying to figure this out..... Shoot I was about ready to get me Word because these new updates for Pages suck.... Thanks once again! lvg

Comments Closed.

Background Images In Pages

Comments: 12 Responses to “Background Images In Pages”

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