While most of us usually use Pages or any other word processor to mainly enter text, they are actually capable of much more than that. What sometimes comes as a surprise though, is how powerful Pages in particular can be not only on your Mac, but also on your iPad. In fact, Pages is crawling with little neat features that make it far more than just a mere tool for writing. In this entry we will show you one of these really useful features that allow you to remove a photo’s background (a pretty advanced image editing task) right from within Pages on iPad and have text wrapped all around the resulting image. Ready? Here are the necessary steps. Step 1: With your Pages document open, tap on the ‘+’ sign at the top right and select the rightmost tab in order to choose a photo to insert into your document. The photo will be positioned where your cursor is located.
Step 2: Now tap on the image to select it. Next, tap on the paintbrush icon at the top of the screen. There, from the drop-down menu select the Image tab and then tap on Instant Alpha from the available options.
Step 3: Once you select Instant Alpha, you’ll see some instructions below stating ‘Drag across colors to make transparent’. To follow these directions, drag your finger across all the elements of your photo’s background. Once you drag over a section and lift your finger, the selected parts will change color. These are the parts that will become transparent once you are done.
Cool Tip: If you make any mistake with your selection, simply press the Undo button at the top left of the screen to remove the last selection. Additionally, tapping and holding on this button will also give you the option to Redo your last move.
Step 4: Once you finish with your selections, tap on Done and your photo’s background will disappear almost entirely. The result might not be flawless but it will do the trick.
Step 5: Now that you’ve removed the background from your photo, you can freely wrap your document’s text around it. For that, select your photo and tap on the paintbrush icon once more. There, under the Arrange tab select Wrap and choose the Around option.
Once this is complete you will see the text neatly arranged around your photo. It’s great how all of this can be done right inside Pages. Enjoy!
