[Buck_W]

Does anyone know if Pages enables you to turn the 'white' portion of a graphic object's background transparent so that it (the background of the graphic) blends into the color behind it. For instance, if I was placing a graphic object on to another object with a blue background, is it possible to blend the two so that the white background on the imported graphic becomes transparent, thus allowing the blue to come through?

My apologies if my question is not clear. For those familiar with In InDesign, I would use the "Clipping Path" feature. Does Pages have anything similar to this?

Thanks

[Visnaut]

Most definitely.

You can insert either a text object, or a shape (keeping in mind you can type into any pre-defined shape) and then in the Graphic Inspector (the tab with Fill/Line/Shadow options) you can click on the fill swatch and change the color and opacity in the color palette.

There's also an opacity slider in that same inspector, but it'll affect the overall transparency of the object, including the text contained within it.

[Buck_W]

Originally posted by Visnaut:
Most definitely.

You can insert either a text object, or a shape (keeping in mind you can type into any pre-defined shape) and then in the Graphic Inspector (the tab with Fill/Line/Shadow options) you can click on the fill swatch and change the color and opacity in the color palette.

There's also an opacity slider in that same inspector, but it'll affect the overall transparency of the object, including the text contained within it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm familiar with the fill swatch and opacity slider, my question deals with something a little different. My graphic object is blue, but it is on a white background. When I paste it on to a another color in Pages, the white background shows up as white. Is there a way to turn just the white background portion of the graphic transparent, so that it blends into the color of the object behind it. In other words, the blue part of the graphic object appears to be sitting on the the object behind it without the "white box" around it.

To do this in InDesign you chose the "Clipping Path" feature which turned the white parts of your graphic object transparent. Thanks again for whoever might be able to help me with this.

[Visnaut]

Bugger. I completely misread your first post. My apologies.

I couldn't find anything that would automatically mask out portions of a certain color. The only thing that comes close is the Mask option in the Format menu, but that is constrained to a rectangular area.

I think you're just going to have to take that image into an image-editing program and give it an alpha mask. or if it's a simple enough object, just recreate it using the basic graphic tools in Pages.

[chabig]

Pages will respect the alpha channel of imported graphics. So I think the answer to your question is yes. See the Pages user guide.

Chris