Often the program that created them can also save to PDF, which Pages handles directly, and that is then an easier solution.
However, there is a way to import black and white SVG files to Pages with the help of some other programs. It it may be cumbersome, the first time you set it up, and you will have to type commands in the Terminal, but it does work.
- Download the program svg2key and follow the corresponding instructions at http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/zusman/dave/svg2key/ .
- Run the program on the SVG you want to import to Pages.
- You will get a Keynote file. Open it in Keynote.
- Copy the content and paste it into Pages.
6 comments:
I thought this technique was to get .svgs to be added to the shapes menu.
If it does not what is the point, as it would be quicker and easier to save as a .pdf and just drag the graphic in?
Good point. Pages makes a few differences between an SVG and a PDF.
With an SVG you can change colour and stroke type of the shape. With a PDF you can only change the stroke of the surrounding rectangular frame. With an SVG you can even set an image or gradient as fill.
There are some restrictions with the SVG compared to the PDF as well. The reflection effect does not work for example.
In the end, the important thing is that you choose the format you need. If you do not need any of the SVG features, clearly PDF is a much easier choice for Pages.
Thank you Magnus, I'll play with svg2key and see what it can do.
Is there no way to add custom shapes to Pages' shapes menu?
This would be a really cool feature if we could get it to work.
Ofcourse it would be better programming to make .pdfs editable, as Pages' drawing tools are so woeful.
Hi Magnus,
After playing with some imported .svg shapes I found that reflections do work using both bitmap and pdf masked objects.
As do stroke and picture frame.
So I guess .svg are win, win! :)
The only difficulty I can see is in removing an image fill from the shape. It seems delete, deletes both shape and fill, then undo brings back the shape without the fill. Weird!
The Fill pull-down menu becomes unavailable.
Unfortunately, the tip does not work anymore. The svg2key application is only available for Macs with a PowerPC CPU, and right now (2012) hardly anyone has a PowerPC Mac anymore, all current Macs are Intel-CPU based.
You'll get this error if you try to start the svg2key application:
/usr/bin/svg2key: Bad CPU type in executable
is there a fix for this now?
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