How to Add a Photo in Pages for iPad

Add some visual aids to your word-processing documents

What to Know

  • From within a Pages document, tap the Plus (+), tap Photo or Video, and choose the image you want to use from your albums.
  • Alternatively, tap Plus (+), select Insert From, and navigate to where the image is stored (Dropbox, iCloud, or another service).
  • The image is inserted into the document wherever you leave your cursor.

Here's how to insert a photo or image into a document in the Apple Pages word-processing program for both macOS and iOS. You'll also learn how to edit your images.

How to Add a Photo in Pages From the Photos App

Start by creating your document from scratch or use a template to create reports, books, letters, flyers, and more. Then, you can insert photos, resize the images, move photos around the page, and add different styles to the border.

  1. Open the document you want to update in Pages. Place the cursor where you'll want to place the image.

  2. Tap the plus sign at the top of the screen.

    The Add button in Pages for iPad
  3. You'll see several options available. Select Photo or Video.

    Photo or Video option in Pages for iPad
  4. If this is your first time adding a photo, you'll need to grant permission to Pages to access the images on your device. Otherwise, you'll see a list of the albums in your Photos app. Select one, and then find the image you want to use and tap it.

    Selecting an album to place a photo from in Pages for iPad
  5. The picture will appear wherever the cursor was.

How to Add a Photo From Another Source

You don't just have to pick an image from your photo albums. Pages can pull from other places you might be stashing pictures.

  1. In the Add menu (after you tap the plus sign), select Insert from.

    The Insert from option in Pages on an iPad
  2. A menu will open with the other sources you can access. The list, under the Locations heading, may include cloud storage services like Dropbox and iCloud Drive or your Files app.

    The Locations heading in Pages for iPad
  3. If you don't see one of your services listed, tap Edit and turn all of the switches to on/green.

    Locations in Pages for iPad
  4. Tap one of the locations to browse the photos there, and then tap it to add it to your document.

How to Edit Pictures You've Placed

After you choose a photo, it will be inserted into the page. But you might want to adjust its size, appearance, or move it to a different place. Here's how to do it.

  1. After you've added a photo, tap it to select.

    A selected photo will have blue dots on the sides and corners.

    The selection handles on a photo in Pages
  2. To change the size of the photo, drag one of the blue dots. As you resize, a display will show how big the image is.

    The image will scale as you resize it; the width and height will stay the same relative to each other regardless of which handle you use.

    On-the-fly image size while resizing in Pages
  3. To center the image, drag it left or right. Once it is perfectly in the middle of the page, it'll snap to an orange line.

    Snapping an image to the center of a Pages document on iPad
  4. You can also move the photo elsewhere on the page, and the text will automatically wrap around it.

    Text automatically wrapping around a photo in Pages
  5. Pages also includes style adjustments for images. Select the photo, and then tap the paintbrush icon in the upper-right corner.

    Under the Style menu that pops up, you can do things like add borders and shadows, reflect the image, and make it more transparent.

    The style menu for photos in Pages
  6. Use all of these tools together to get your document and images looking exactly how you want them.

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