New In Pages: Using SVG Files

Pages, Numbers and Keynote now have the ability to import and display SVG files. This is a common format for vector graphics. You can even convert them to native shapes, though those only support one fill color at a time.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at the new ability for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote to use SVG Files. 
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Now a new version of Pages just came out and one of the main features is the ability to use Vector Graphics. Specifically SVG images. You have to have Pages version 13.1 or the latest version of Numbers and Keynote that match. Once you have this version of Pages you can create a new document here and I'm going to go and create a blank layout document, that will be the easiest way to do it. You can add SVG files. 
So first, what are SVG files? Well, SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. Basically, instead of having individual pixels that are different colors like a regular image, SVG files are drawings. They are lines or more accurately curves. When a curve meets at the other end it can have a Fill inside of it. So it's the kind of thing you would create in an app like Adobe Illustrator, for instance, or many other different apps. The advantage to SVG files is they are scalable. Since the line defines the shape, not individual pixels, you can keep zooming in on it or enlarging it on the screen and the line is always going to be sharp. So I've got some SVG files here and let's try dragging those in to see. 
I'm going to drag this first one in here and I could also use the Insert, and then Choose, and then choose an SVG file as well. But drag and drop works best in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Now this is the SVG file in here. You can see how there is a curve here. Let's zoom in here and you could see the curve remains sharp. In fact if I were to enlarge this quite a bit then I could see that I'm not really going to loose any of the definition of the curve because this is a curved line here, not a set of pixels. So that makes them very useful for things like ClipArt Graphics and  such. You can now use these inside of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote like regular images and, you know, have them as basically ClipArt. 
Pages, Numbers, and Keynote already have these shapes. You can go and select a shape in here. Let's do like an animal here. You've got something that looks a lot like a SVG. So these native shapes and SVG's are actually now related because you can turn this into native shapes. One of the differences between a native shape and a SVG is that SVG's can have multiple colors. A shape, like one of these, could only have one color for the fill, and you can see it here and I can change it to something else, and can also have a color for the border. So I can set a border, like a line border, and change its color like that. So with SVG's you can see there are multiple colors. There's a color right here and another color right here in this case. 
So converting isn't as simple as now it is just a shape because this can't be a shape. It has multiple fill colors. So let's try converting it. I'm going to go to Format, and then Shape & Lines, then Break Apart. That's how you convert it to a shape. Now once you've done that nothing much seems to have changed. Now I've got this border around it and you can still resize it like before. But, you don't really have any extra functionality. As a matter of fact if you go to Format, Shapes & Lines nothing is available. It doesn't seem to be a shape at all. That's because it is a Group. If I go to Arrange and look at Groups you can see Ungroup is active. So it is a Group. I can ungroup it and now it ungroups into individual shapes. So this is a shape. This is a shape. This is one and this is one. I'm going to select a shape like this. I can now go to Format, Shape & Lines and things are available. In addition I can also go to Format, Style and I could change things. Like the color Fill for that item or I can add a border to it if I want. 
Let's look at another example here. Here's a more complex SVG of a dragon. I'll drag that in here. Now you can see several different colors. You've got this gray color. You have a dark red and you have a light red here. You also have this thick border. But it is not really a border. If you look the black lines go into the image here. So it is more like drawn definition. So, I can just use this as a regular SVG. I can position it where I want. I can, you know, go to Arrange. I can even rotate it. You know. Do whatever I want here and just use it as is. But, if I want to convert it to Shapes I need to first go to Format, Shapes & Lines, Break Apart then go to Arrange and Ungroup. I'm going to see there are a lot of different shapes in here. I can select this shape, for instance, and see it is just this one section. I can select this shape here and can see it is just that body part. The actual outline isn't an outline at all. It's a thickly filled line right here that is used to create the definition there. So it is not simply a line around anything. These are all kind of filled shapes. So it is a  little more difficult to deal with. 
But one of the things you can do is once things are a shape you can actually edit them. So I can select, say, the tail part here and let's get rid of the border there and just make it a simpler shape like that. Let's say I wanted to make this tail longer. I can go to Format, Shapes & Lines, and Make Editable. Then it shows me all the points. Sure, I can select an individual point like that and drag it. I could also select a series of them. Let me go back in again. Shapes & Lines, Make Editable and now I could select a bunch like that. Select one of those points there. I could drag it out. So I could actually alter the shape if I wanted to. So there are a lot of different things you could do with Shapes & Lines. 
Now one of the things you could do is go to Shapes & Lines and Save to my Shares. But each one of these is an individual shape. There's a whole bunch of them here. So you'll be saving a ton of different shapes and it is not easy to reuse them like that. If you wanted to have something simpler, like let's bring this one in here again, I'm going to go to Format, Shapes & Lines, Break Apart. Let's Ungroup and then let's get rid of this, get rid of that, get rid of this and let's say I wanted this as an individual shape. This is just one here. I could go to Format, Shapes & Lines, and now Save to my Shapes. Now you could see in Shapes at the bottom there is my shapes and I've saved this and I can name it something. I could easily add another one and reuse it. So you can, with a simple shape, that just a shape with a line with a fill, you can import them in or, if it is several shapes, like if it is this whole thing here, you can see I can't do it when it's just an SVG. But if I break it apart and then Ungroup, now with all those selected I can go to Shapes & Lines, Save to my Shapes and it is probably not what I want because you can see now it saved all of these. It's got 1, 2, 3, 4 different shapes saved. So I probably want to go in there and delete those, you know, each individually. It creates a little bit of a mess. 
Now I mentioned Numbers and Keynote do this as well. It works the same way. So I'm, going to create a new Keynote document. I could easily drag one of these SVG files in there. So I could use this. So it might even be more handy in Keynote where we often want to put lots of different graphics. 
You can, of course, make your own SVG's. I mention apps like Adobe Illustrator before. A free illustration app you can get in the Mac App Store is called Vectornator. If you have that app you can draw your own shapes in here if you're handy with, you now, graphics tools. So I can make say a star tool like this. Maybe one different than the regular star. Then I can export this as a SVG right here and then let's put it on the Desktop. I'll Hide it there. Then in Pages here I can go ahead and bring in my SVG there. There it is. I can do the same thing here. I can convert this, breaking it apart, and you see you get a warning here because not everything is supported. But, you know, this does look basically the same here. You can see this one even remembered the line. So I can change the line type here or the color or I can change the color fill now that it is converted to a shape. 
As for things not being supported you'll find that that's very true when you have very complex SVG's. Like here's a SVG that's a whole map. When I bring this in, if I go to Format, Shapes & Lines, and Break Apart you can see it can't be broken apart because there are parts that aren't supported. So there are things that you can put in SVG files that wouldn't necessarily be supported in Pages when you try to break it apart. However, the SVG still works. This is still a Vector Graphic and I can, you know, enlarge this quite a bit and zoom in and you're still going to see very crisp, clear lines in here because these are curves and not individual pixels.
So I think this is great new functionality in Pages really expands what we can do using ClipArt because a lot of ClipArt collections have SVG files or you can convert the ClipArt to SVG if there is some other vector format. Being able to use those natively in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and hopefully, at some point, in Freeform since they kind of seem to use engine. Maybe we'll get an update to Freeform. Maybe by the time you see this video there will already be an update allowing you to do the same thing in there. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “New In Pages: Using SVG Files”

Ken Nellis

11 months ago

Great seeing more acceptance of SVG. Realized that Pages doesn't support animated (SMIL) SVG images. Maybe later!

Louise Kienast

10 months ago

Thanks so much for this information. I will be helping present a 1 day introduction to Freeform. I have spent the last few months learning about this application. Yesterday I learned that I had several applications that could save files as SVG files. I used them in Pages but also use them in Freeform. On the Mac, using the pen to draw shapes adds more ways to create interesting shapes. Now with the addition of Pages ability to use SVG files and also open them in Freeform, the sky is the limit.

New In Pages: Using SVG Files

Comments: 2 Responses to “New In Pages: Using SVG Files”

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