Tips and Tricks For Using Shapes In Pages, Numbers And Keynote

The shapes in Pages, Numbers and Keynote can be used to spruce up a document or presentation. You can do much more with them besides a simple color fill and border.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at some tips and tricks for using Shapes in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
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So in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote you have the ability to add shapes from a large collection of shapes provided by Apple. But there is some deep functionality in using shapes. So let's take a look. To demonstrate I'm going to use Pages. But you do all of this in Numbers and Keynote as well. I'm going to click on Shape here at the top and the way I add a shape is just by selecting one here. There are all these categories to the left. I can just scroll through them or click on a different category to see different shapes. Then when I want to add a shape I simply click it and it adds it to a document. Once it's there I can drag it around to move it. I can grab a corner or edge and resize it. If I move my cursor over one of the side handles here and hold the Command key down I can rotate it. Then I can set Styles here on the right. In Pages under Format, Style I can set Fill and Border. So, for instance, I can set a line border. Set it to a color. Change its size. Change its type. I can do the same thing here with the Fill. I can go and change the Fill color to anything I need. So you basically have one line style and color and one Fill for the entire shape. 
But you can break shapes apart if you want to use multiple colors. So with this shape selected I'm going to go to Format and then Shapes & Lines. This is where we'll find most of our controls for shapes. Here I can choose Break Apart. Since this is a shape that has different shapes inside it, each one of these rays coming out of this sun is its own shape, it will break all those apart. Now I can select just the center there and set a fill color for that. I can select each ray. I'm going to hold the Command key down and select them all and I can set a different color for the rays. Now if you still want to treat this as one object to move, resize, rotate, and so on you want to select everything there and then go to Arrange and then Group. It will Group together all of these shapes into a single group. I could always go and ungroup to get back to the individual items there.
Now you have more Fills available than just a solid color fill. You can switch to a Gradient fill which will go from one color, you can see a darker blue, to a lighter blue there. We could change it to something more dramatic like going from red to blue like that. I could change the angle and reverse the fill if I want. I could also go to Advanced Gradient Fill where I could add more than just two colors. So I could click here just below the line and add another color and now you could see I've got three different colors here. I can keep adding different colors and change how the colors change from to another using all of the controls here on this line. 
I could also go to a radial fill by clicking here. Now you can see I've got a center of the gradient and an outside point. I could drag around the center. I could drag around the outside point. Bring it in. I could have more or fewer colors to the gradient there. You could also do an image fill. So I'll select image fill here and it will use a default pattern. But I could drag and drop any image I want into here. So I'll drag an image just from the Finder right into this spot and you could see it fills it there. I could select how it scales so I can have it Scale to Fill, Scale to Fit, Tile stretch, or Original Size. If I do something like original size I can scale it myself. I could also go to Advanced Image Fill and in addition to doing all that I can also choose a color to tint the image. Another way to do an Image Fill is to drag and drop an image into the shape. That uses the shape as a frame. So now I've got a photo, basically, embedded into the shape. It's not set as the Fill but as an actual image here and I can Resize it and position it just like I were using any image in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.
You could also add text to any shape. So if you double click in a shape and you start typing it will add text just as if it was a text box. So I can fill this shape with text here and you can see it gets a little tricky when you have an unusual shape like this. It works better on a solid shape. Something more rectangular or just as a single element. But you could do some interesting things with this. For instance you could fill with a single letter and simply increase the size. You could change the font to whatever you want. Change the color. Do things like that. 
Now if you ever want to combine two shapes into one you could do that. So I'm going to take this frame shape here and this performing arts shape here. Position them where I want them. Select both and now if I go to Format, Shapes & Lines I can unite the shapes. Now it's a single shape. It will have one color fill and one set of borders. You could also subtract shapes from one another. So for instance I could take this heart here. Let's make it a color so it stands out and I position it inside this tee shirt shape. Then I could select both of them and go to Format, Shapes & Lines and  subtract shapes. It will use the shape on top to punch a hole in this shape. So you can use that to create new shapes. Now this hole here is transparent. But I could always put one shape on top of another. So I create another shape here that's just a rectangle. Make that fill the space here over the heart and let's set it to a color. Now I'm going to send it backwards so it's behind. So now I've got two different shapes. One on top of the other. I can select them both and I could group them to create a multi colored object. 
You could also use this technique to invert shapes. So for instance you have this one here. Let's say I want to have the inverse of this. I'll just use a basic rectangle here. I'll make the rectangle really big and I'll send it to the back and then I'll Shift click to select that bell that's there in the middle and then I'll do Shapes & Lines and subtract shapes and now I have basically a background that has a hole in it. Something else like an image or some text or something can show through in that hole. 
Now you can also Edit shapes. So with this shape selected here I'll go to Shapes & Lines and I'll make Editable. Now I've got all of the end points and curve points here that I can drag  to alter. So I can do all sorts of different things with the shape. I can even select points and delete them. I'll select these three here and hit Delete and now I've gotten rid of that part of the shape. Or you can just draw your own from scratch. Click Shape here and then use this pen tool and now you can click and put points where you want. Click and drag to set something as a curve and create any kind of shape you want. Connect the first point to the last point like that and now you can set a Fill to fill the shape. You can continue to Edit by dragging the different points here. Selecting them or deleting them. Whether you've created this shape on your own or edited an existing shape or combined a couple of shapes together you can Save this as a new shape. So just go to Format, Shapes & Lines and then select Save to my Shapes. Now you can give it a name and you'll find you can use it in other documents as well. 
Now here are a couple of more tips. You can select a shape and copy it and then, as you would expect, you can paste it into other Pages documents, into Numbers, into Keynote. But you could also paste it elsewhere and it will just convert it to an image. So, for instance, in Mail here I could just paste, Command V, and it will paste it in and it's just a little png image. You could do the same thing in Messages. You could do the same thing anywhere you can paste an image. Here's one last tip. If you set things up with a Fill that you like, with a border that you like, and you want to use that same style for other shapes you could save it to Styles. Under Format, Style here you'll see Shape Styles. If you use the arrows here to move over you'll see a Plus button. Click Plus and it will Save that style. So now if I were to add another shape, like a tree here, then I could just go to Style, find that style, select it and it will apply the same style between these two. This is really great for making your artwork look consistent throughout your document because you can make changes and it will apply to all of them. So I could back to this apple here, for instance, and say well that's not quite the right fill color. I want to do this one. Then I could Control click on the style here and say Redefine Style From Selection. When I do that it's going to tell me that another object uses the style and I can choose Update All Objects. I can see it updates that one. I could have a hundred different objects using this style and I just updated them all throughout my entire document.
So I hope you found these tips for using Shapes in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Tips and Tricks For Using Shapes In Pages, Numbers And Keynote”

nick

6 months ago

Gary, is there a difference between Unite and Group shapes?

Gary Rosenzweig

Nick: Uniting shapes will combine their lines and curves into a single shape. It merges the actual shape itself. Grouping will keep both shapes separate, but now they move together as a single object when you drag them. Experiment to see. Put a circle and square overlapping somewhat, and set a border and fill for both. Then group them. Then do the same with two shapes by unite them.

Gene

Another great video! I am so glad you have the “back 10 second” button as I use it a lot.

Lauren Eisen

i agree with gene, the :10 rewind is very useful as are all your videos, thank you!

Peter Baldwin

I am having trouble regrouping a shape after using the Break Apart option when working with shapes. I do not seem to be able to highlight the the group of shapes using the mouse to then regroup.
Is there a trick to this?
Thanks.

Charles Russell

I’m already in the middle of your Numbers course so this video is very helpful. Getting carried away was is not a problem.

Peter: Try clicking on one shape and then hold the Command key down to click on the others. Or, drag around all the shapes.

John Murdin

2 months ago

Hi Gary, great videos – I’ve learnt a lot from your videos – thanks!
After watching your tutorial on editing shapes I got hooked!
Do you know if there is a way within pages to alter the perspective of a grouped object ie I’ve created a window frame with panes and a sill for instant – but I want to transform it so that it looks as if it is a side window – with the left side narrower that the right side – going towards a “vanishing point” – I can paste it into Sketch and use Transform – HELP!

John: There are no tools like that in Pages/Numbers/Keynote. If you want to do things like that, get an app like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer and make those graphics there. Then import them into your document as an image or a PDF.

Tips and Tricks For Using Shapes In Pages, Numbers And Keynote

Comments: 9 Responses to “Tips and Tricks For Using Shapes In Pages, Numbers And Keynote”

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