2013

Photo Handling 273
Converting objects or drawings to bitmaps
You can easily create a bitmap from any object, or part of your drawing, including
from other bitmaps. The bitmaps can be any size or resolution and can contain
transparency. You can also create bitmaps with reduced numbers of colors which can
be useful for web use.
To create a bitmap from objects:
1. Select the object/s on the page.
2. Right click and choose CREATE BITMAP COPY or choose CREATE BITMAP COPY
from the ARRANGE menu ("Ctrl + Shift + C").
3. In the dialog box, select the color depth, the size and other options.
For maximum quality select a color depth of true color, or if you want transparency to
be included select "true color + alpha" (alpha transparency is the technical term).
You can create bitmaps with fewer colors by selecting a color depth of 256 colors or
less. This also provides control over the dithering and palette options. These options
are described in the section on exporting bitmaps (on page 333).
Note this always creates PNG images, which are the highest quality image type.
However for full color photo purposes, these require a lot of memory and file space.
Use the optimize photo option to convert PNG images into embedded JPEG images
to reduce the file size.
Photo Documents
Sometimes it's useful to work on one photo alone, rather than as "objects on a page".
This is called a photo document or "photo mode" in Page & Layout Designer, and it
behaves more like a traditional photo editor. You can create a photo document in a
number of ways:
• Drag a photo file from your file explorer onto the title bar or toolbar of Page &
Layout Designer
• Select "
FILE" > "OPEN" and select a photo file
• Create a blank photo document by selecting "
FILE" > "NEW" > "BLANK PHOTO"
Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared
to traditional Page & Layout Designer documents:
• There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically
to match the photo plus any other objects you've added.
• Photo documents have a 1 pixel grid by default and snap to grid is turned on. This
makes it easier to get pixel-accurate crop or clip regions.