Meeting Notes
Make A Greeting Card In Pages
by Barrie M. Phillips
We all send greeting cards to family and friends during a typical year, and there are many greeting card companies that include just about any message you want. However, if you want to send a card that is truly unique, make your own. In this tutorial I will show you how to make your own card using your iPhoto collection and the Pages app from iWork.
I always start with a blank template that has frames for the pictures I will use, some placeholder text, and a small message from the 'manufacturer'; here is a picture of the front of the template page. You can make your own template easily by selecting a rectangle from the Shapes menu, sizing it appropriately and placing it where you want. The bottom half of the front is designed for a card-spanning photo, but before we insert the photo let's revise the text to match the intended recipient. A picture of the revised text is shown below (you can see that because the text we want to use is a little shorter than that on the template we were able to enlarge it a bit; use the keyboard shortcut, command and the + key).
Next we want to select the picture that will span the bottom of the front of the page; note that the green rectangle with the black border is simply a placeholder and it will be replaced by the picture you drag into it. Now is when all that hard organization work you put into your iPhoto collection will really pay off, because you will be able to go to the media pane and select your first picture from all the pictures you have of the intended recipient (or at least all the ones you have tagged with filenames, keywords, or Faces). If you haven't done that organizational work it's going to be a bit more work to select the photos you want to use. Here we have selected the Photos section of the Media pane, where I have a Smart folder to hold all the tagged photos I have of our second daughter Betsy. 
Smart albums are a simple way to create a repository for all your pictures of a person (or place or thing). All you have to do is make sure that all your photos of that person have the person's name in a filename, a keyword, or Faces. Then set up the Smart folder to automatically incorporate photos of that person when you add them to iPhoto (or tag them).
Here I have selected one of the photos and dragged it into the green rectangle at the bottom of the page. You can see at once that there are two problems; the photo is too dark (you can't see the greeting) and it isn't centered in the space available even though I have reduced the size of the picture (note that the size slider in the Edit Mask dialog has been pushed to the left). 
You solve the size problem by pulling the slider in the Edit Mask dialog left or right; when you have the size right you can click outside the placeholder rectangle and move the photo around to get the appearance right. To correct the darkness of the picture go to the graphics section in the Inspector and reduce the opacity using the slider you see at the left. I find that an opacity of about 60% works quite well. Now we have a front side pictures that is the right size, centered, and with a low opacity so that the greeting shows up well.
The last thing we need to do is to make sure that the text under the maker's picture (don't forget to replace our pictures with your own) is appropriate. The template used our names, and while that might be appropriate for a card going to a friend it is not appropriate for a daughter's card. So just click in the text box below the picture (both are upside down, but when the card is folded they will be right side up) and the text flips right side up; change the text as you wish and click outside the text and it will flip into final position.
Now the front of the single sheet is complete. You can't see the top edge of the page and the side edges on the upper half of the page, but the page will be folded along the top of the picture, and the picture, depending on your printer, will come close to the edges of the bottom half of the page.
Now we start to work on the back of the page (this will be the inside of the card that will be revealed when the recipient opens the card). The first thing to do is to modify the greeting itself. This view shows the Show Text dialog box (I have chosen a cursive font, but you may have another favorite). We have room here to increase the size of the font size and I will do that before finishing - remember to leave room below the text for your handwritten notes.
Once the greeting is composed and sized it is time to add a full page picture on the inside of the card, and you do that the same way you added the picture to the bottom half of the outside of the card. The only difference here is that there is no placeholder, because you are working with the entire page so you have plenty of freedom in resizing your picture and moving it around. When you have it where you want it you have to select the picture (by clicking on it) and then go to the Arrange menu and choose Send to Back. 
Then reduce the opacity of the picture (again 60% works quite well) so that the greeting text shows up crisply and the photos you add will stand out. The template has placeholders for 10 smaller pictures and I always try to select pictures for a birthday card that are representative of the previous year.
In this view you see that the full page picture is in place in the background, the opacity has been reduced and the greeting has been resized. To add a picture simply select it from the Photos section of the Media pane and drug it into one of the placeholders, 
When you do that you may have some trouble recognizing the picture, because what you see is only a very small section of the picture (how small depends on the resolution of the photo you dragged in) as you see in the first picture below. The dashed line you see in this picture (and in the next two) show the placeholder rectangle.
Again, the solution is the slider in the Edit Mask dialog that appears under the picture. Push the slider to the left and the picture gets smaller until the size of the subject is appropriate; this is illustrated in the second picture.
Now, as shown in the second picture, the subjects are the right size, but they are off center. To correct that, click outside the placeholder to reveal the full photo (the third picture).
It may be hard to see the faint edges of the full picture here, but look for the white squares at the corners and the sides. With the full picture visible you can now move it (with the cursor or with the arrow keys) to center the picture more appropriately within the placeholder rectangle. Once you click the Edit Mask button after centering the picture the edges of the full picture outside the placeholder disappear.
When you have placed all the pictures you have finished creating the inside of the card and you are done. Print the card in two passes through your printer (after allowing enough time for the first side to dry completely). 
Exactly how you position the paper for the second pass depends on the paper path through your printer; for my printer I turn the printed side down and turn the page 180 degrees lengthwise before inserting it back into the printer, but that may not apply to your printer so a little experimentation may be required to establish the process for your printer.
When both sides of the page are dry it is time to fold the card. You will make a single fold 5.5 inches from the top (you don't have to measure it - 5.5 inches is half-way down on an 11 inch page). Be careful to have the edges meeting exactly before you press at the fold to put a good crease in the paper. It helps to use a smooth roller of some sort to really get a good fold. When you now hold the folded card you will see the page spanning picture on the front, and when you open it you will find the fold exactly between the third and fourth pictures in the vertical rows.
Some will say that the layout I have chosen for my template reflects more the mind of an engineer than that of an artist. While that may be, with Pages you have a truly blank palette and you should let your imagination have free rein. Use pictures of varying sizes, rotate some of the them (using the Rotate ability in the Metrics pane of the Inspector), use some of iPhoto's effects on some of the pictures, or if you're feeling really far out use some of Photo Booth's special effects. I prepare Christmas cards the same way, including plenty of family pictures, and here I personalize each one by including a picture of the intended recipient. What is important is that you will be creating a card for someone that is likely to be remembered forever.
