Rapid Start Guide

Whenever you add a new piece of content to your document, it becomes embedded in a shape that you can select and work with.

Each shape is a graphical container to which you can add any combination of:

There are several ways to create shapes:

Type, paste or drag text into shapes you have drawn; and insert, paste or drag an image into these shapes.

You can also insert an image, or drag new content (text and/or images), into your document without first drawing or selecting any shapes. In this case, default shapes (rectangles) are automatically created to hold the new content.

Shapes provide fully adjustable "shaped cropping" of images. You can size and position an image with complete freedom behind the "viewing window" formed by the image's containing shape. Only the image area that lies within the shape is visible.

Any shape can be given a text runaround with any outset distance, which causes text to flow around it, rather than over or under it.

Use the Inspectors to add, remove and edit text, images and styles to a shape as well as editing the shape itself for complete control over your document.

The opacity of each element of a shape (text, text shadow, image, line, fill, and shadow) can be set separately, on the corresponding inspectors. Also, an overall opacity can be set on the Shape Inspector, which applies to all elements on a shape, and combines with any other opacity settings. For example, if some text has been set to 50% opacity on the Character Inspector and its containing shape is set to 60% opacity the two opacity settings will combine to give the text an opacity of 30%.

You can open multiple documents at the same time. Each document is displayed in its own document window.

Choose menu option Window > New Document Window (or keyboard shortcut  ⇧⌘N  Shift-Command-N) to open an additional window on the current document.

Each document window holds an independent view of a document. Edits that you make in one document window are displayed in all other views of the same document, in real time.

Each document window has its own independent settings for:

Use the Page Mode buttons (on the page view title bar) to select between Body Page View and Master Page View. The button blue fill color indicates the current selection.

A new document window opens up in Body Page View.

Use the Edit Mode buttons (on the page view title bar) to select between Normal View, Text View and Preview.

Normal View is the normal design mode. By default, Normal View shows all document content and large images are shown at reduced quality. Different options for image and PDF display quality are provided on the View Options window. Normal View can include different sorts of non-printing construction lines and characters, to aid with document creation, which can be shown (or hidden) via settings on the View menu.

Text View helps focus on writing, by removing distractions. All images and PDFs are substituted by placeholders and all shape shadow and text shadow is hidden. Shapes and lines can either be displayed at reduced opacity, or hidden entirely, via the View Options window. Text View can include all the same non-printing construction lines and characters as Normal View, which are shown (or hidden) via the same settings on the View menu.

In Preview, what you see on the screen is exactly what will be printed or exported as a PDF. All non-printing construction lines and characters are hidden and the View menu settings for these items are ignored. All images and PDFs are shown at original (full) resolution, which is how they are included in all printouts and PDF exports.

As more large images and PDFs are added to a document it may start to respond more slowly to editing actions. Similarly, adding many shape and text shadows can also make a document less responsive. If this occurs, these corrective options are available:

The gray rectangle behind each page or two page spread is called the canvas.

You can create content anywhere on a canvas. The canvas provides a useful working area when you don't want to interfere with an existing page layout.

When you print your document, only content within the page boundaries is printed (unless you select to add bleed and crop marks, which will be added outside the page boundaries, effectively increasing the print size by the combined size of the bleed and crop marks on each page edge - see below for more information about bleed and crop marks).

To zoom smoothly, in or out of a document, hold down the Option key (marked 'alt' on some keyboards) and use your mouse scroll wheel. The zoom is centered on the mouse location.

To pan smoothly around a document, i.e. move your field of view in any direction, use Option-drag.

To zoom to the current shape selection (in or out), use Option-double click.

There are two types of text container: columns and paths.

To create a container with a text column:

To enter column text inside an existing shape, double click on it with any of the Pointer Tool, Text Tool, Reshaping Tool or Rotation Tool selected. A column will be created if one doesn't exist already and the text cursor is inserted.

To enter text on a shape's path, you must first enable the path by either:

To use the Text Along Path Tool for manual path enabling, move your mouse cursor over a shape's outline until the outline becomes highlighted blue and the message "Click to Type on Path" is displayed, then click to enable the path for text entry.

More information about using the Text Flow Tool is provided in the Flow linking section (see below).

Once any particular path has been enabled, that path can be opened for edit at any time by simply double clicking on it with any of the Pointer Tool, Text Tool, Reshaping Tool or Rotation Tool selected.

There are two selection modes for text:

Enter character selection mode by:

Enter paragraph selection mode by:

The format or style of every character is controlled at two levels, both of which you can adjust:

Here's an example of how this works in practice. Imagine this paragraph forms part of an iStudio Publisher document. It has a paragraph level character setting of no underline. To underline just these characters their individual character setting has been set to underline.

IMPORTANT: When the Return key is pressed the paragraph level character settings carry forwards to the next paragraph and any individual character settings will not influence the text formatting of the next paragraph. Similarly, if existing text is selected and overtyped it will revert to its paragraph level character settings, and any individual character setting overrides will be removed.

You can apply text format settings to whole paragraphs or individual characters, depending on whether you select text in paragraph selection mode or character selection mode.

Text can flow through any combination of linked columns and paths. Flow links can be set up using the Text Flow Tool.

Here's a micro movie that demonstrates the following four flow link activities:

NOTE: The text that appears in the movie as the containers are flow linked is overflow text from the first container.

Text flow icons indicate the existence of flow links and text overflows, for columns and paths, as follows:

To display text flow icons select one or more text container(s) with the Pointer Tool.

The following example shows the text flows present after completing flow link step 1. of the above micro movie.

It shows a text outflow from the hexagon's column (orange icon) and the corresponding text inflow into the curved shape's column (green icon). The curved shape is also showing a text overflow (red icon), warning that some of the text in the flow has not been displayed because it won’t fit into the column space available.

When flow linking a source (upstream) text container to a target (downstream) container, any existing text in the target container will be appended to any existing text in the source container. No text content is lost or deleted.

When flow linking a source (upstream) text container to a target (downstream) text flow that spans multiple text containers, here's what happens when flow linking to the second or subsequent text container in this target text flow:

If you have a text flow that spans several linked text containers here's what happens if you select some but not all of the containers with the Pointer Tool and delete them:

Printing and exporting menu options are available on the File Menu. Printing uses the standard macOS Print dialog. There are separate menu options available for exporting to: PDF file as single pages, PDF file as two page spreads, booklet PDF file, EPUB or RTF file.

When designing a document with images that extend to the page edges, it is common practice to add bleed and crop marks. Bleed and crop marks can be enabled and set up on the Document Inspector, and get added when you export to PDF file by choosing menu option File > Export as PDF (or to booklet PDF via menu option File > Export as Booklet PDF). Note that bleed and crop marks don’t get added if you print via iStudio Publisher's File > Print menu option.

Bleeds are added outside the finished page size, and are shown as red lines in the document window. You should extend your page content beyond the finished page size, and out as far as the red bleed lines. Crop marks are added outside the bleeds. Crop marks aren't shown in the document window, and only get added when you export to PDF or booklet PDF.

To speed up your work, we recommend that you become familiar with the mouse actions and keyboard shortcuts.