Pages
Comic Life is a special page layout program designed for making comics
easy. A comic is laid out on one or more pages. When first started
Comic Life presents you with an empty page in the edit area with its
associated thumbnail in the page organizer.
A Note on Page Sizes
By default Comic Life is configured to show a page that's suitable for the web. You can change the page size by choosing the "File->Page Format..." menu and picking a different Page Size in the popup menu:
You can also adjust other page settings here including specifying a completely custom page size.
By default, sizes are specified in points - there are 72 points to an inch and 28.35 points to a centimeter. You can change this in Preferences
Tip: If you have a particular page size you always want Comic Life to use you should specify that in the Preferences.
Laying out a page
You could immediately start
adding images and balloons or what ever
you like to this page, but most comics are laid out as a series of
panels that let you structure your story. Comic Life provides a couple
of easy ways to create a particular panel layout for your page.
Layout options
Grid layout
To create a page with a regular grid layout where each panel is the
same size as the others use the "Page->New Page with Grid
Layout...". A sheet appears where you can specify the number of rows
and columns for the page and a gutter.
Note: The
gutter is the spacing between the cells and
the margin.
Enter the rows, columns and gutter values you desire and click the OK
button. A new page is created after the current page.
Template layout
Page templates provide many irregular page layouts which you can view
in the Page Template browser which is described in the next section: Libraries.
Custom layout
Comic Life also lets you design a completely custom layout by placing
panels directly on the page and adjusting them to suit your needs. See
the Panels
section for more information.
Adding pages
There are four ways to create a new page:
Blank Page
To create a new blank page use the "Page->New Blank Page" menu
item.
A blank page is added after the current page.
Page with grid layout
Use the "Page->New Page with Grid Layout..." option described
above.
Page from a template
At any point you can drag a page template on top of the current page
being edited and create a new page with that template.
Page from current page
You can easily create a new page of panels based upon the layout of the
current page. Choose "Page->New Page like Current Page".
Deleting pages
To delete a page make sure it is displayed in the edit area either by
selecting it in the organizer or by using the "View->Page Up" or
"View->Page Down" menu items.
Once the page is selected
choose the "Page->Delete Page" menu
item. A confirmation sheet is displayed. Clicking "OK" will delete the
page.
Reorganizing pages
You can change the order of pages in the organizer by dragging pages up
and down the organizer:
Page Controls
A small portion of the window is dedicated to some handy page controls
as shown below:
The "+" button adds a new
blank page after the current page. The
"-" button deletes the current page (after you have confirmed the
action in a sheet). Clicking on the button with a gear reveals the
context menu for working with pages. This menu can also by revealed by
Cmd clicking on the page organizer:
Most of these menu items have
been described before so we'll focus
on the additional entries.
Make
Text on Page Bigger
increases the size of
all the text in balloons and captions on the page.
Make
Text on Page Smaller
decreases the size of
all the text in balloons and captions on the page.
Delete
All Text on Page deletes
all the text in
balloons and captions on the page.
Note:
lettering elements are not affected by these
three actions.
These actions are also available in the Page menu on the menu bar.
Page Details
There are no special options for pages.
Page Styles
See the Page
section of the Working with Stylesheets
section.