Painting and Drawing in AppleWorks

You don't have to be a professional illustrator or spend hundreds of dollars to buy software that creates professional-looking artwork. You already have a program that will perform many tasks—AppleWorks. This program comes free with the iMac and iBook, and it's inexpensive enough so that even if you never exploit the capabilities of all its modules, you'll find it handy to have around.

AppleWorks 6 includes 25,000 clip-art images.

Only a handful of these clip-art files come with the software's CD. You have to download the rest of the collection from Apple's Web site, using the program's Web Starting Point and picking your categories of interest. With so much free space for extras on the CD, I wonder what Apple was thinking when it came up with this awkward method of accessing the entire collection.

In this section, I cover some handy ways to get the most out of AppleWorks' illustration tools. You'll also find it easy to apply some of these methods to other graphics-related programs, so you'll have a leg up on harnessing their power, too.

Once you've learned a cool set of steps to spruce up your AppleWorks graphics, you can record them as a macro. Just choose Macros from the Edit menu and Record Macro from the submenu to begin creating your automated routine. You'll also find some useful AppleScript shortcuts in the Scripts menu.

Painting and Drawing Hints and Tips

All of these have been tried and tested with AppleWorks 6, but most will work in earlier versions of the program.

Make a duplicate.

You can create a duplicate of any selected item this way: Hold down and then drag the item. Presto! You now have two copies.

The method of duplicating an item is part of most graphics programs.

Fast eyedropper access.

The eyedropper tool lets you quickly copy the attributes of a selected item, such as the outlines and fills of a drawing and the color of a painting. You can access the eyedropper by pressing , regardless of which tool you are using. Press again to switch back to whatever tool you were using previously.

Polygon shortcuts.

Use the polygon tool to create multisided shapes. When you hold down , you can constrain (or hold) a shape to exact 45-degree angles. Just click your starting point or double-click to end the shape. If you wish to create an exact number of sides in the drawing layer or environment, first click the polygon tool, then choose Polygon Sides from the Edit menu, and select the number of sides you want your shape to have. For the paint mode, just double-click the polygon tool to produce the dialog box where you specify the number of sides (don't ask why it's different in each mode—who knows?).

If you loved the tear-off palettes in older versions of this program, sorry—they're gone. In addition to the toolbars, AppleWorks has an Accents palette (available from the Window menu), which shows color and line options, and a Styles palette (available from the Format menu).

Dotted lines.

If you need dashed or dotted lines—say, for a coupon—AppleWorks doesn't make it easy, but it can be done after a fashion. In the drawing layer, first select the Accents palette and choose the thickness setting for your lines. Then click the Patterns palette to give the line the style you want. In the painting environment, first select a paintbrush and then choose Edit Brush Shape from the Options menu. From here, just pick the shape you want and click the Edit button. This last option actually lets you toggle each pixel in a line. Click the bitmaps in the line to create the separations or gaps. Once you paint your line, it'll take on the style you selected.

To paint or draw a straight line, hold down while drawing the line.

AppleWorks Color-Editing Shortcuts

AppleWorks doesn't have the color-matching abilities of the high-end illustration programs, and it can't print color separations. But it offers fairly decent control of color selection and styles. Here's how it works:

1.	Open the Accents palette and double-click any color you want to edit.
2.	You'll see a scrolling list that contains a list of color-configuration options. For the most part, just moving a slider will change colors. Choose the color scheme from the following: CMYK Picker lets you configure a color based on a four-color model. Crayon Picker gives you a choice of 60 colors from a screen that looks like a box of crayons. HLS Picker presents a color wheel that affords you three color settings—one for Hue Angle, another for Saturation, and a third for Lightness. HTML Picker is designed for Web pages. The sliders let you choose from the standard range of Web colors, and the actual HTML code appears in a list for your coding pleasure. RGB Picker works in the same fashion as your Mac's display. Selections are based on the three primary colors: red, green, and blue.
3.	Once you've edited the color, click OK. The selected color appears in the color palette, ready for you to use in your document.

If you want to save a custom color or pattern setting for other documents, follow these steps:

1.	Once you've selected your new color or pattern, click the pop-up menu in the palette and select Save As.
2.	Give your palette a descriptive name so you can identify the color later on (Shocking Blue or whatever applies).
3.	Click Save. From here on, you can choose that color scheme from the Accents pop-up menu for any of your AppleWorks illustrations.

AppleWorks Drawing Tips

The following tips apply primarily to the drawing environment in AppleWorks, but you'll find that many of these suggestions apply with equal facility to other programs.

Retain a selected tool.

Normally, when you click a tool and then use it to perform a function, such as creating a circle, it's deselected as soon as you finish creating the shape, and it reverts to the selection tool. But what if you want to continue using the same tool? Just double-click the selected tool, and it gets a blue background to show that you've selected it for repeated use. It will remain selected until you click a different tool.

Change shape quickly.

No, this isn't something out of a Star Trek movie. It's a way to refine an image to include accurate, custom attributes. If you create a drawing with the rectangle or rounded-rectangle tool, just double-click the shape and you'll see a dialog box in which you can set the radius of the corners and whether to round the object's sides.

Constrain your drawing.

This is a standard tool available in most drawing programs that helps ensure precision. Just hold down when you draw an object to constrain it to exact angles or squares or circles. For example, a rough oval becomes a perfect circle and a rectangle becomes a square.

If you hold down while moving one or more objects, you'll restrict the movement to an exact horizontal or vertical line or to a 45-degree angle.

Master your master pages.

AppleWorks has one important feature in common with page-layout programs—the ability to create a master page containing items that appear in all other pages of your document. Here you can place items that you want to appear on all pages—folios, page numbers, images, whatever you wish. To use this feature, follow these steps:

1.	From the Options menu, choose Edit Master Page.
2.	Use your drawing or text tools to create the objects you want to appear on all pages in your document.
3.	Once the master page is ready, return to the Options menu and choose Edit Master Page again to return to your normal page. From here on, the master-page elements will appear on all the pages in your document.

If you don't want the master-page elements to appear on a specific page of your document, you can cover them up with a rectangle or other object the same color as the page background.

AppleWorks Painting Tips

Painting, drawing—what's the difference? You can create illustrations with both, right? So why should you choose one over the other? The painting environment affords you some extra color tools that can really give your illustrations some pizzazz. When you start a paint document, you can take advantage of an extra set of tools. Among these are the magic wand for selecting complex shapes, plus a paintbrush, paint bucket, spray can, and pencil. Each of these tools allows you to apply special blending, color, and tint effects to your drawings.

Once you get used to these added tools, you'll discover a whole new dimension of illustration possibilities.

Precise illustration positioning.

The ability to move objects around freely is both a blessing and a curse. If you need to place an object in a special location, try the autogrid feature. This creates a set of automatic alignment points where the items you drop snap into place. To activate the feature, just go to the Options menu and then select Turn Autogrid On. This feature also works in the drawing layer.

If you want to fine-tune your grid to a specific size, simply choose Grid Size from the Options menu. Set a grid increment that lets you accurately position the elements of your illustration.

Although the autogrid feature helps you refine the position of illustrations, it can be a bit inhibiting, because the grid increments prevent free movement. If you don't want a specific element to snap into a fixed location, return to the Options menu and choose Turn Autogrid Off. Don't worry—this won't change the way you've positioned other parts of the illustration. You can activate autogrid again via the same steps for those elements you do want to snap into place.

High-end graphics programs, such as Canvas, have a guides feature, which allows ultraprecise positioning. You just display the ruler, place the pointer within the ruler, and then drag a guide to the appropriate position on the page. The built-in snap-to guides in these programs allow the elements of your illustration to simply drop into place.

Selecting paint images.

One thing you'll find different about a paint document is that it doesn't have any corners and handles you can select to move or change an object's shape. This makes object movement more awkward, but the process works fine once you get used to it. Here's how it's done:

1.	For a rectangular object, click the selection rectangle in the lower half of the tool palette. The pointer will change to a crosshair.
2.	Drag the crosshair pointer to the start of the area you wish to select, and then drag to cover the area. Hold down to include nonwhite areas inside the selected area.
3.	Drag the selected item to its new location.

To select an irregular image, use the lasso tool instead. You can select painted items and bypass the blank space between them by double-clicking the lasso.

Tips and Tricks for Adobe Photoshop

Hands down, Photoshop is at the top of the photo-editing-software heap. Whether you get the free version (full or limited edition) with a new scanner or you've bought the retail package, prepare for a real treat. Since it's a professional graphics tool, however, you may find it takes a while to master some of its best features. I'll cover a few of the really useful ones here:

TWAIN or plug-in—which to choose.

Scanning software may come either as a Photoshop plug-in or as a TWAIN driver. Does it make a difference which you choose? If the software comes in both forms, choose the plug-in format. It'll usually launch faster—sometimes a lot faster. This may not mean much if you're scanning a few documents, but if you are handling many pieces of artwork, you can save a lot of time. (TWAIN, which reportedly stands for Technology Without an Interesting Name, was designed as a unified standard to give software a single resource for add-on features, such as activating scanning software. However, most Mac programs simply don't support the feature.)

Exporting transparent images.

An assistant or wizard is a great way to simplify a complex process. In its Help menu, Photoshop has an assistant called Export Transparent Image, which lets you select and then export transparent illustrations (Figure 14.8). These images are great for Web use or for a document you create with a page-layout program. Once you call up the Export Transparent Image assistant, just follow the instructions and you'll make simple work of a formerly difficult task. You just pick the steps that apply to your particular needs, and the assistant guides you through the process of making the image transparent and then exporting it in the proper file for print or Web.

Multipurpose tools.

As with many Adobe programs (and QuarkXPress, for that matter), many of Photoshop's tools have submenus with two or more variations for the tool. A quick way to run through them is to hold down while clicking a tool. Each time you click, you'll see a different hidden-tool display.

Whoever designed the hidden tools for these programs didn't realize how they would benefit from sticky menus. You still have to click and hold the mouse to see all the available hidden tools, even though sticky menus debuted in the Mac operating system several years ago when Apple rolled out Mac OS 8.

Tool options.

Some tools have special options—for example, the magic wand tool has options for the tolerance of the selection and anti-aliasing. A quick way to find out whether a particular tool has any options is to simply double-click it—you'll then see them displayed in the Options palette.

Convenient multiple undos.

One of the features missing from older versions of Photoshop was the ability to undo more than a single action. Adobe's clever answer is the History palette, which puts up a display of all the operations you've performed on your artwork. Just click any item in the palette to revert to that particular step in the image-editing process.

Photoshop sucks up RAM, as you might expect of any high-energy graphics program. You can reduce the amount of RAM required by clearing the history once you are certain you don't want to revert to a previous version of the photo. Just hold down when you choose the Clear History option from the History menu, and you'll permanently erase the history.

Actions palette shortcuts.

Photoshop (and Illustrator) offer the actions macro feature, which can record a series of steps you take or store any available menu-bar command. A good way to experiment with actions is to try out the ones already included. Photoshop 6.0, for example, comes with a dozen prebuilt Actions. Just look for the Actions folder inside the Adobe Photoshop Only folder. To add Actions to Photoshop, choose Load Actions from the Actions menu (the submenu in the palette) and then select the ones you want to try. Once you get through this list, you may find you have all or most of what you need without having to create any of your own.

For fast access to your recorded actions, open the Actions menu and choose the Button mode. Any action is now just a single click away. You can also learn the keyboard command connected to an action by selecting the appropriate shortcut and then choosing Action Options from the Actions menu.

Restoring preferences.

Like any complicated program, Photoshop has many preference settings that can have a large impact on how the program looks and acts. If you go a little too far in tweaking these, you might want to restore the preferences to their original condition. Version 6.0 puts the preferences in the most logical location, the Preferences folder (inside the System Folder). Once you open the Preferences folder, open the Adobe Photoshop Settings folder and remove the Adobe Photoshop 6 Prefs and Color Settings files. The next time you launch Photoshop, the program will restore the default (factory) settings.

Getting rid of palettes.

Heavy-duty graphics programs can fill your screen with a plethora of palettes—and soon you find you can barely see the image you're working on. You can easily dismiss any individual palette by clicking its close box, but if you want to delete several at a time, that involves several steps. Instead, just press and all the palettes and the toolbar vanish. Another press of , and you get them back. This is a boon for any Mac user stuck with a small monitor (or any owner of an iMac or Apple laptop).

Try out for extra choices.

is a great way to exploit secret features of the program. For example, you can use the eyedropper tool to fix your artwork's foreground color. But if you hold down , this affects the background color instead. When you hold down while dragging an object, you make a copy (this works the same way in AppleWorks). Experiment with to see what treasures it will reveal.

Get another view of your artwork.

If you're lucky enough to have a large display (or even luckier, the gorgeous wide-screen Apple Cinema Display), this technique can give you a different perspective on your project. Just choose New Window from the Window menu to bring up a second window showing the very same document. You can establish separate zoom settings for each window and click between them to check your changes quickly at various views. This trick also works with a multiple-monitor setup.