Pages and Pixelmator Pro: edit embedded photos

Gary from MacMost demonstrates editing photos in Pages with the Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro 4.3. The workflow requires an Apple Creator Studio subscription. Users open an image through the sidebar, Format menu or context menu, then return their edits with Save to Pages or Command-S.

Pages embeds a Pixelmator Pro document, so reopening the image preserves adjustments, effects and separate layers. The examples include an arrow layer and a sepia effect. Cropping in Pixelmator Pro changes the image but leaves its Pages frame in place, which may need a separate adjustment. Gary also demonstrates undoing a saved edit in Pages and removing sky to create transparency.

The tradeoff is document size and access to Pages' own image controls. Those controls become unavailable after editing through Pixelmator Pro. Convert Image restores them by flattening and recompressing the image, discarding the embedded editable document. In the example, a 2.7 MB Pages file grows to almost 15 MB after a round trip without edits. A later conversion reduces it to 1.8 MB. Reducing the image width from 4,000 to 1,000 pixels and converting again produces a 1.2 MB file. These are demonstration results, not guaranteed savings. The tutorial ends with the same editing workflow in Keynote and notes support in Numbers.