Document Size
Menu Project - Size and Color
The canvas is the white rectangle on your screen where you place your object. You can place objects anywhere else and it is perfectly fine, but canvas represents the part which will be exported, so it defines the size of the output image. You can, however, export any other part of the document with the Crop Tool.
Real-DRAW doesn't ask you before you start your project for the canvas size. Instead, the default size will be used. This is done because many times you don't know the exact size before the project starts. Real-DRAW uses a reverse approach - to fit the canvas around the object when we are done. For that we have commands: Trim Canvas and Trim Canvas Expanded plus a manual Crop Canvas (All in menu: Project). Thanks to them you don't have to worry about the placement of the objects on the Canvas. The Canvas can be resized to fit the objects. See the detailed description in Export.
You can, however, still use the first standard approach when you set the Canvas size before you start working.
For example, if
you need the project to be exactly 320x200 pixels etc. you can use the Canvas Size and Color
settings.
To change the Canvas Size and color:
From menu: Project select Size and Color
Here you can change the size and the background color. You can set the background color by typing the web color or selecting it from the color selector. Clicking on the Color preview, the left part of the color selector will bring you another window, where you can set the color by specifying RGB, Hue, Sat, Lum, or pick a color from the basic windows colors.
Tip: You can also change the background color during Export.
To change the default Canvas size, which appears on startup or
anytime you press New:
From Menu: Project select General Settings
Note: In this case the current document doesn't change.
If the active document is a Package (for example you
double-click on a Package to open it for editing) then this dialog sets the size and color of the package canvas.
The Package canvas is however transparent when shown in the original document.
Normally the Package size is updated dynamically. That means that if you add another object out of the Package canvas, it will be resized as soon as you save the package. This way all the objects will always be visible in the package.
On the Size and Color dialog, this is indicated by checked Dynamical Update of Package Canvas Size.
In special cases when you don't want this behavior you can uncheck this option. In that case the package will be cropped by the Package canvas size. This will also be indicated by the title of the Package window : "Package (Canvas Crop)".
A typical example of this is the e-book cover sample.
 |
 |
 |
| The Blue circle and letter B are "bleeding" from the canvas. They are just partially inside the canvas. | Because we didn't use Dynamical Update of Canvas Size, the package will be cropped at the Canvas. This is what we want. | This is if we do use Dynamical Update - obviously this isn't what we wanted. |
