About Designing a Document

Each page of an iStudio Publisher document is formed from a combination of two pages - a master page and a body page.

Understanding how to use the master pages and whether using them is appropriate is worth considering for all documents of more than a few pages in length.

Whenever you add a new shape, text box or image, it will be added in front of any existing shapes on the page. You can adjust the front to back 'z' order of shapes from the Arrange menu or via the corresponding toolbar buttons that are labelled Order.

If a shape is covered over by other shapes, which are preventing its selection, select a different shape and press the Tab key repeatedly to cycle the current selection between each of the shapes on the current page or spread (or Shift - Tab to cycle in the reverse order).

On the Preferences panel you can set the default text style for the app: font, size, color and line spacing. These preferences are applied to newly added text only, and won’t change the style of any text already in a document.

To change the font, font size, or text style (including color), start by selecting the Text Tool and then select some text so that it is highlighted either blue (character selection mode) or triple or quadruple click the text to select it highlighted purple (paragraph selection mode). You can now choose a different font, font size or style from the Character Inspector.

Styling text in paragraph selection mode provides two useful effects. Firstly, if you press the Return key to start a new paragraph the text style will be automatically carried over to the new paragraph, whereas it won’t be if you've styled the text as individual characters. Secondly, if you select all of the existing text and replace it by overtyping with new text, text that has been styled with paragraph wide scope will retain this style, whereas text styled as individual characters will revert to its underlying paragraph wide style.

We are planning to add named character and paragraph styles, and style catalogues to a future version. Until then, as a workaround, copy and paste existing paragraph and character styles (using options on the Edit menu). Supplement this by creating a separate iStudio Publisher document that contains examples of your regularly used styles, to copy and paste into your other documents.

If text has been styled in paragraph selection mode you can copy and paste paragraph and character styles to another paragraph by following these steps: 1) Insert cursor in source paragraph, 2) choose menu option Edit > Copy, 3) Insert cursor in destination paragraph, and 4) choose menu option Edit > Paste Paragraph Style (and you don’t have to paste the character style separately, as it’s included with the paragraph style).

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.

Every image is contained by a shape. When you insert, or copy and paste, or drag and drop an image (or PDF) into a document you can either add it to an existing shape, or otherwise a rectangle shape (with no line stroke or color fill) will be created to hold it. Images added outside existing shapes are scaled to fit comfortably within the currently set page size. PDFs added outside existing shapes are scaled at full size. Images and PDFs can be sized and fitted within their containing shape.

To add an image to an existing shape (or shapes) select the shape(s) before inserting or pasting the image. An image file in Finder can be dragged and dropped on a shape without any preselection - just drop it when the shape becomes highlighted.

Any shape can be used to contain an image, including shapes from the Shape Library and those drawn with the drawing tools. Each shape can hold a maximum of one image at a time.

How an image fits in a shape is controlled by the Image Inspector Fit setting. Images and PDFs are added to shapes with a default Fit setting of “Fit - No Stretch”, which enables image repositioning/resizing by selecting and moving/resizing the containing shape. The Fit - No Stretch setting scales an image proportionally to fit entirely within the bounding box of its containing shape, such that it always just fits within (and fills) the smallest relative dimension (width or height) as the shape is resized.

iStudio Publisher provides fully adjustable "shaped cropping" of images, within any shape, including shapes from the Shape Library and those drawn with the various drawing tools. To enable shaped cropping, select a shape containing an image and then go to the Image Inspector and set options Fit: Manual and Align: Manual. You will now be able to set the size and position of the image with complete freedom behind the "viewing window" formed by its containing shape. Only the image area that lies within the shape will be visible. Adjust the size of the cropping shape with the Pointer Tool and its shape contour with the Reshaping Tool, as required.

IMPORTANT: Avoid setting Fit: Manual on the Image Inspector and then scaling down an image so that its containing shape remains much larger than the image. This can become inconvenient if the containing shape covers other document content and prevents its selection. We recommend only setting Fit: Manual when you want to crop an image.

To work with an image at a particular DPI (dots per inch) resolution choose the DPI value on the Image Inspector “Use DPI” pop-up list. The Scale settings on the Image Inspector will change to reflect the newly set Use DPI value, enabling the image to be managed and resized in this context. Generally, use 300 DPI for images in documents that will be printed out, or 72 DPI for documents that will only be viewed electronically, on a screen.

IMPORTANT: You should keep the Scale settings at or below 100% for the image resolution to remain at or above the Use DPI value. Scale settings above 100% are displayed in a red warning color to alert that the image has been stretched and may appear pixelated when printed or displayed.

Construct a table manually by drawing a separate rectangle for each table cell. TIP: Follow these steps to quickly create a table with styled text cells:

Create a table in a separate application (e.g. TextEdit, Microsoft Excel, Word, or Apple Numbers, Pages) and export this as a PDF for inserting into your iStudio Publisher document. The formatting and style of the table from your source document will be retained. Some applications support copy and paste..