2013

Table Of Contents
Photo Handling 249
Photo Handling
Introduction
Photos are an integral part of almost all creative work nowadays, from websites, to
flyers, brochures, DTP work and more.
Photo handling in Page & Layout Designer is very different than you may be used to
with other graphics programs.
In MAGIX Page & Layout Designer 2013 you can color, crop, copy, blend, enhance,
clone, feather (fade the edges of) photos as much as you like. The object oriented,
non-destructive nature of the photo handling means that, for example, when you
resize a photo, you are not really altering the original photo, but just resizing a visual
copy. The original imported image is saved in the .xar file, so that you can later edit,
and resize again, or apply any of the Photo Tool editing options, with no loss of
quality. You can even un-crop cropped photos.
The photo handling is astonishingly fast. You can open a 50 Megapixel photo, and
perform any of the enhance operations, and rotate the full resolution image in real-
time.
This chapter covers the basic principles of manipulating photos and bitmap images in
MAGIX Page & Layout Designer 2013. The operation of the Photo Tool is covered in
the separate Photo Tool chapter.
*Benchmarks based on photo compositions created with multiple hi-res JPG digital photos
Photo Objects
In Page & Layout Designer photos (or bitmaps) are just another type of object on the
page. You can drag and drop photos onto the page from your file explorer, and then
you can resize, rotate, copy and move them around just like any other object.
Importantly you can adjust the transparency, even graduated transparency, feather
edges and clip and cut shapes out of photos with ease. The transparency feature lets
you blend, merge or create composite photos.
Where you might have to use layers in other photo tools, every object in MAGIX Page
& Layout Designer 2013 is on its own layer and, just as with any object on the page,
you can move it forward to be in front, or backwards to be behind other objects.
Photo Groups
If you edit a photo using some tools such as the integrated Red Eye tool or Clone Tool,
the photo becomes grouped with other objects that modify the image in some way.