By Design with Online Design – Layers and the Polaroid effect

When working on your page layouts, desktop publishing software such as Adobe InDesign will allow you to work with multiple objects stacked on top of each other at once.

New functionality released this year with Walsworth’s Online Design will now allow you to use Control+click while working with stacked objects on layers in the Page Editor.

New functionality released this year with Walsworth’s Online Design will now allow you to use Control+click (Command+click for Mac) while working with stacked objects on layers in the Page Editor. Holding the Control key (Windows) or the Command key (Mac), while clicking on objects which are stacked on top of each other, will allow you to select an object on a lower layer so that you can modify it or change its position using the Layout palette.

Here are steps for a way to achieve a Polaroid™ look with one of your images. When finished, you can use Control+click to make adjustments.

1. Open a spread in the Page Editor.

2. Drag a box on to the page from the Shapes library and keep it selected.

3. Enter a suggested size of 21p tall and 19p wide for the box.

4. Open the Object Effects palette by clicking the Effects button in the Control Panel.

5. Click the check box to apply a Drop Shadow to the box. The Drop Shadow should use the suggested settings of: Angle 0, Opacity 50% and Distance 4.

6. In the Control Panel, set the border of the box to 0.25.

7. Open the Object Color palette by clicking the Color button in the Control Panel.

8. Set the Fill to White, and the Border to Gray 1.

9. Drag a second box on to the page from the Shapes library.

10. Enter a suggested size of 16p tall and 18p wide for the second box.

11. Set the border for the second box to None in the Object Color palette. The Fill color will remain gray to place a candid image.

12. Move the second box on top of the first and leave an equal amount of white space on the left, top and right sides.  There should be a larger white area below the gray box.

13. Place a photo in the gray candid box and double-click on the image to bring up the Transform Object (Cropping) window and crop your image appropriately.

14. Use your Type tool to create a text box and type a brief caption to be moved to the white area of the Polaroid™.

• Set font to AWPC Handwriting or AWPC Sleepwalker
• Font size 21 (AWPC Handwriting) or 15 (AWPC Sleepwalker)
• Set Alignment to Center

15. Use your Selection tool and move your caption text box onto the white area of the Polaroid™.

16. Use your Selection tool to “lasso” select both Polaroid™ boxes and the text box.

17. Rotate 2 to 4 degrees or -2 to -4 degrees in the Control Panel.

Now, you can use Control+click, or Command+click for Mac, if you would like to make adjustments to any object in the Polaroid™ stack. For example, if you would like to change the angle or position of one of the lower objects, Control or Command+click the stack of objects repeatedly until the object you want to modify is selected.