How to Create a Flyer on a Mac

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When you need to get the word out quickly, creating your own flyers is a breeze on a Mac computer. Every Mac comes with Pages, Apple's own desktop publishing app, which includes flyer templates. If none of these suit you, create your own flyer from scratch in a blank document. Pages includes advanced image-editing options so you can be certain any color photos will look their best when printed or copied in black and white.

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Creating a Flyer Document

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Pages 5.2 comes with five templates suitable for flyers. To find them, select "New Document" from the File menu and select "Flyers & Posters" from the left sidebar. You can then replace the template's content with your own photos and text. To start a flyer from scratch, select the "Blank" document from the Basic section to create a blank letter-sized flyer -- the most economical option for printing or photocopying flyers. The default margins on a blank document measure 1 inch, which is wide for a flyer. To reduce the margins, click the "Document" button in the toolbar and then click the "Document" tab. Reduce all four margins to 0.5 inches to maximize your flyer's use of paper.

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Adding Photos to a Flyer

If you keep your flyer's artwork in iPhoto or Aperture, click the "Media" icon above your flyer and then select the image you want to use. You can also drag images from Finder or from a website directly onto the flyer. After the image is in the document, drag it to where you want it to appear. Double-click the image to resize it or crop it using the tool that appears below the image on the screen. The photos in a flyer template are placeholders, so there's no need to delete them. Just drag your own image onto the placeholder to replace it.

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Working With Black and White Images

Some color photos can be problematic when printed out in a black and white flyer. Take a look at what your images will look like before printing the flyer. Double-click a photo to open the Image Format options in the right sidebar and then drag the "Saturation" slider all the way to the left to make the image black and white. Directly below the Saturation slider, beneath the Enhance and Reset buttons is an Enhanced Adjustments Options button. Click this button to adjust the image's Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and other settings to get the image as crisp and as detailed as possible.

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Adding Text to Your Flyer

Unless you want your flyer to look like a letter, use Text Boxes instead of just typing on the document. This gives you greater control over the content and makes it easier to align your text with images. Just click the T-shaped "Text" icon to add a Text Box and begin typing. Formatting options automatically appear on the right. To move or resize a Text Box after typing, click on the background and then click the Text Box.

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Making Text Stand Out

Rotating a text box is an attention-grabbing effect on flyers. Use it to create a "Sale!" banner in the corner or add tear-off strips with your phone number to the bottom of a flyer. To find the Rotate option, select the Text Box and then click the "Arrange" tab in the right sidebar. Use bold fonts for titles to make them stand out. While Pages comes with a large selection of fonts, you can add fonts downloaded from the Internet. Just double-click any Apple-compatible font file and then open the Font Book to install it. When the font is installed on your Mac, it's available in Pages.

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