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Transparency Tool
You can adjust the transparency of any graphic or photo to make it see-through. More
than this, Page & Layout Designer supports graduated transparency. It works very like
the graduated color fill. In the Transparency tool just drag across your shape and you
can see the transparency fades. You can adjust the degree of transparency of each
end of the fill arrow, by clicking on either end of the arrow, and adjusting the
Transparency slider. See Transparency (on page 222) for more information.
Feather
This is a graphical term for blending the edges of objects. Page & Layout Designer
provides a feather control that enables any object, graphics, text or photo to be
feathered - giving it a blurred edge that blends with the background. The Feather
control is not a tool on the left, but one of the controls on the top bar. Try it on your
rectangle shape. Select the shape and then click this Feather control on the right of
the top bar.
The shadow below the ball drawing above has a feathered edge. Combining all of
these controls you can very quickly produce amazing layered graphics for your design,
all directly in Page & Layout Designer without needing any other graphics tools.
This is an example of a rounded rectangle with
grad color, grad transparency and feathered
edges with some text placed on top of it.
This has a graduated color fill, light to dark green
going left to right. It also has a vertical graduated
transparency fading from top to bottom. The
feather gives it a soft edge. It takes a couple of
seconds to create such an image, and it's
automatically converted to the right graphic
when you save your design.
Shadow Tool
A very popular graphics effect is to create a soft drop-shadow under a graphic or
some text. This serves to lift the object away from the background.