The Canvas 5 tutorial lessons describe the preparation of a newsletter and a slideshow presentation document. We purposely kept the tutorial lessons simple so beginners can follow the procedures. But we also wanted to show off the capabilities of Canvas 5, so we used many different techniques to accomplish our goal of making the newsletter and slideshow look their best.
When you work with these documents, you might find that what you've created doesn't look exactly like what we've created. This document describes some techniques we used in constructing the newsletters and slideshows. It answers many of the questions from users about the tutorial documents. It also includes some new tips and tricks you can use in Canvas 5.
THE TUTORIAL LANGUAGE
The tutorial documents contain a kind of industry standard gibberish called "Lorem Ipsum" (named for the first two words of the text itself). It is not meant to be read. Designers use this "dummy" text for visualizing page layouts.
PHOTO IMAGES
All photo images in the newsletter document, and the background photo image in the slideshow document, are made from photographs on the Canvas 5 Installer CD. The photos were manipulated in paint edit mode in Canvas 5.
The same photo is used in the images on pages 1 and 7 of the newsletter.
The foreground angled photo on page 3 of the newsletter, and the background image, "Backgrnd.CV5," to be placed in the master slide of the slideshow, are from the same photo. The boat was taken out of the photo image in "Backgrnd.CV5" with the Rubber Stamp tool, and its colors adjusted with the Brightness/Contrast command in the Adjust submenu in the Image menu.
DISPLAYING TEXT BOXES
You might notice that when you first start working with the newsletter tutorial, text boxes are not visible. But when you add text columns to the document with the Text Object tool, the text boxes become visible. This is because Canvas turns on the display of text boxes whenever you use the Text Object tool.
If you open the Display submenu in the Layout menu, the command "Hide Text Boxes" indicates that text boxes are visible. Choose this command when you want to make text boxes invisible again. The command changes to "Show Text Boxes" when text boxes are not visible.
GROUPED ELEMENTS ON NEWSLETTER PAGES
If you want to take a closer look at some of the individual elements on a page of the newsletter, you need to first ungroup the objects. With the Selection (solid arrow) tool, click anywhere on the page. Then check the right end of the Status bar at the bottom of the screen. The message displayed there, such as "Group of 6 objects," tells you that the current selection is grouped and made up of six objects. You might be surprised to see how many separate objects make up a page. Also, some objects are actually in the background behind other objects where they can't be seen.
USING IMAGES IN PAGE LAYOUTS
The photo of the crab with its drop shadow is a good example of grouped and hidden objects.
You might notice that the crab photo named "Newsfoto.CV5" doesn't have a drop shadow when placed in the document (in the procedure on page 29 in the Getting Started guide). However, the same photo already in the tutorial document does. If you ungroup the page elements, you'll find that the photo and its drop shadow are one object. You might wonder how we create drop shadows, and how to make text wrap perfectly around an entire image.
The answer: You can combine a photo and drop shadow into one image with the Render command. To effect a perfect text wrap, hide an object in the background; then you can make the text wrap around the object while it appears to wrap around the image.
TO CREATE A PHOTO DROP SHADOW:
1. Begin by determining the finished size of the photograph. Use the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle about the same size as the photo. The pen stroke should be No Stroke and the fill ink color should be black.
2. Select the rectangle and choose Area > Render in the Image menu. The Render Image dialog box appears. Set Mode to RGB, type the resolution in the Res text box, and check Anti-Alias to soften the edges of the shadow. Canvas creates a paint image from the rectangle. You can delete the original rectangle when you are finished with it.
3. You need to add more area to the paint object so you can blur the edges for a soft shadow. To do this, select the image. Then, press Control and drag a corner handle to expand the image area. After you've expanded the image to add some blank area (about 1/2 inch) around the edge, double-click the object to place it into edit mode.
4. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur in the Image submenu. Type a value from .1 to 250. We entered 7.3 for the shadow of the crab photo. The lower the number, the more subtle the blur. After entering the setting, click OK.
5. You can lighten the image slightly by choosing Adjust > Levels in the Image menu. We entered 0, 1, and 255 for the Input Levels, and 18 and 255 for the Output Levels. Click OK when you are done adjusting the image.
6. Press Enter (Mac) or ESC (Windows) to leave edit mode. Select the shadow image once more and choose Area > Trim in the Image menu. This removes any extra white pixels around the border that are not necessary to the image.
7. Select the photo, bring it to the front (Arrange > Bring to Front in the Object menu), and place it on the shadow. You might need to resize the shadow if it's too big. Select both the photo and shadow and choose Area > Render in the Image menu. This fuses the two images into one rendered paint object. Once again, you can delete the original photo and shadow when you are done with them.
WRAPPING TEXT AROUND PHOTOS
Now you can move this image to the location in the document where text will wrap around it. If you wrap text using just this image, text on the shadowed side of the photo might not wrap around the photo cleanly; it can run too close to the photo where there is no drop shadow.
To prevent this from happening, create a narrow rectangle that is about the same height as the photo and drop shadow with the Rectangle tool. The pen stroke should be No Stroke and the fill ink color should be null to make the rectangle invisible.
Choose Arrange > Send to the Back in the Object menu. Select the rectangle and the photo, and choose Group in the Object menu. With this grouped object selected, select the text you want to wrap and choose Wrap > Outside Shape in the Text menu. The text should wrap parallel to the photo without staggering at the drop shadow. If it is still staggering, choose Undo in the Edit menu and ungroup the photo. Move and reshape the rectangle, and repeat the grouping and wrapping procedures.
Sometimes it takes a little fine tuning, but your text will wrap exactly once the hidden rectangle is in the right spot.
WRAPPING TEXT ON AN ANGLE
A similar technique to the text wrap described above is used to wrap text with the angled photo on page 3 of the newsletter document.
With the Selection (solid arrow) tool, click anywhere on page 3. Note in the Information area of the Status bar that the page contains a group of six objects. Choose Ungroup in the Object menu. The six objects appear selected. Notice that the background photo and the foreground angled photo are one image. This was created the same way we created the crab photo with the drop shadow: We selected and rendered two separate photos into one image.
The text can't wrap to the angled photo because it is actually a part of the background. To get the text to appear to wrap to an angled photo, you can draw a polygon with the Curve tool to match the angled photo's size and shape, and then send the polygon to the back of the stack of objects.
With the polygon selected, select the text to wrap to the angled photo. Then choose Wrap > Outside Shape in the Text menu. The text appears to wrap to the angled photo. Again, you might have to undo the wrap and fine-tune the position and size of the polygon to get the text to wrap exactly as you want it to.
OCEAN LOGO CONSTRUCTION
The logo (Logo.CV5) placed into the slideshow is a grouping of vector objects and text objects. The O in the word ocean is a vector object, as well as the ship and the wave. The rest of the word "cean" and the word "adventures" are text objects, which we converted to paths.
If you ungroup the logo you will see that it is now two objects. One of these is a group of five objects. The other object is an invisible rectangle. The invisible rectangle was created, sent to the back, and grouped with the other object so that when you move the logo to the master slide, you can match the upper left corner of the logo's bounding box with the upper left corner of the master slide to easily position the logo correctly in the slide show.
CREATING THE LOGO "O"
To create the "O" in the logo, we used the Oval tool to draw a circle about the size of the finished O. We used Freeform in the Effects menu to rotate and reshape the circle. We selected calligraphic pen settings on the Pen tab in the Strokes palette. Then we used the Gradient tab in the Inks palette to fill the O.
To view the calligraphic settings that created the O, open the Strokes palette, select the Pen tab, and click the triangle at the lower-right corner to open the Pen manager where calligraphic options are displayed. Then click the "O" to select it.
To view the gradient settings, open the Inks palette, select the Gradient tab and open the Gradient manager, then select the "O" again to show its inks settings in the manager.
FILE SIZES
Our tutorial documents are full of large full color photos and graphic elements, and yet the file sizes (in terms of disk storage space) are quite small.
One way to keep the file size down is to delete all original objects you don't need after you render new paint objects. Remember that rendering leaves original objects intact as it creates new paint objects.
After creating our graphic elements and photos in RGB Color mode, we convert them into Indexed image mode. This greatly reduces the size (amount of data) of the image. However, RGB Color mode is the most useful mode to use for creating and modifying images with painting tools and filters. Most image filters and anti-aliasing effects are not available for indexed mode. Indexed image mode is most useful for images to be used on world wide web pages and distributed through the Internet. Choose color modes for images to fit the needs of your finished products.
The third method we use to keep the file size to a minimum is to save our files with compression. Turn on the Use Compression option in the Save As dialog box to save your files in a compressed Canvas 5 document format. Some other file formats also offer compression options when you use the Save As command in Canvas 5.
Copyright ⌐ 1997 Deneba Systems Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Canvas is a trademark of Deneba Systems Inc. Mac OS is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their holders.
