Adding Titles and Captions To Things In Mac Pages

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at the new Titles and Captions feature of Pages.

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So this is a new feature in Pages version 10.1. So make sure you have that version. What you can do with this is you can easily add captions and titles to things like images. Let's paste an image in here. You can see I've got just a fairly standard image. Let's add a border to it so we can see the edges of it. In the past if I wanted to add a caption to this I could do it in many ways. For instance I could add a text box. Put that text box just underneath. Shrink it down and set a style for it and add my caption. I could also put a title above it if I wanted to the same way.

But now there's an easy way to do that in Pages. If I select an image here and go to Format, Style I've got two checkboxes, Title and Caption. If I turn on Caption you'll see a text box appear underneath. Click on it there and you could see there's a small text box there. It's part of the image. It's not a separate element. Likewise if I click Title you'll see a title appear at the top. Another little box part of the image. Not a separate thing. Now I can select either one of these and I'll see a new sidebar here. Under Format, in addition to Style, Image, and Arrange, with this box selected I'll see Title here. With this box selected I'll see Caption. If I just select the image I won't see either one of those. So I have to click to select something like the title.

Now to change the text all I need to do is click in here and type My Title. You can see it's a special object title style. I can use any style I want and I can customize this any way I want. But this special Object Title style is something I can update. You'll see it updated in other titles as well. For instance I can make it a bit bigger here if I wanted to. I can do the same thing here with Caption. So I can see Caption here. Let's make this italics. Maybe a little smaller and maybe right justified. Now you can see I've easily added a Title and Caption to this image.

You do have another option here under Format, Style, with the image selected you see the checkboxes and to the right of that you can say I want the Title to be on the top or the bottom. If you put it at the bottom the title appears first and the caption under it. It's another way you can do it.

Now with one of these selected you can, in addition to changing all of the different font and character stylings here, you can go to Layout and change the text inset and other things that you would normally change with text. But you can't change the gap between title and the image itself. The same thing with the caption. You always still have the old way. You can still do a text box or shape above or below and have it exactly how you want it. But for using this quick and easy Titles and Captions feature it stays at this distance from the image.

Now further down in the document here I can add an image. I'll just paste a new one in here. I will do the same thing here. I'll add a Title and Caption. You can see it's using the styles there. So I've got the object title style and the object caption style. If I were to change this, like let's say make the caption a bit more gray, and Update object caption, you can see it updates here as well. So styles work the same as they normally do.

Now you can use Captions for more than just images. For instance you can use them in shapes. Let's put a simple shape here. You can see I can add a Title and Caption to the shape. You can also add it to shapes that you draw. So create your own shapes and then add a Title and Caption to those. You can also add them to Tables. So I'll add a default table here. You can see there's a Title and Caption option there. Before we did have a Title option for Tables. Now we have both. You can also do this with Charts. So I have Title and Caption for those. You don't have the option, in most charts, to put the Title at the bottom. But I'll show you how to get around that in a minute. In some types of charts you have something a little different. For instance in a doughnut chart you have Title can be in the center or the top.

Now if you drag and drop a video in here you can also do Titles and Captions for a video. Even a text box if I just select the box, not the space inside of it, I can add a Title and Caption to it. Which makes sense since text boxes are pretty much just like shapes except without the shape. You can also use them in groups. So let's add some shapes here and group them together. So I'll select each one of these and I'll do Arrange Group. Now the group itself under Format here has Title and Caption. So you can group together a bunch of different elements and have a title and caption for all of those. 

This is how you can put a Title and Caption wherever you want. So, for instance, for a doughnut chart if you really want to have one at the bottom you could go and add a basic shape here. Just make it a white box and put it behind the chart there. Select both. So now both are selected. Group them together and now I can do a Title and Caption for the group. You can see it appears above and below. So you can combine elements to get what you want. 

One weird thing about Titles and Captions is they don't rotate. So I can select this group here and if I rotate the group you can see the Title and Caption will just stay completely horizontal. The same thing with just rotating a single object. So if I go to Arrange here and I rotate this shape or it could be an image, you can see the Title and Caption remain horizontal.

Now you can still go and use a text box as a title and another one as a caption. Group them all together and rotate them just like you want. So you have complete control to get the result you want. The Titles and Captions feature is really just a very quick way to have a Title and/or a Caption to an image or other object that will work in most cases.