Working with Styles
Styles are a handy way to make uniform changes to the look of your
comic - want all panels to have a particular color and width to their
border? Want captions to have the same background gradient fill? These
are all editable in a single place - the Styles Attributes in the
Details tab. All the styles settings in a comic are called a
"stylesheet".
You can save and load
stylesheets independently from a comic -
allowing you to easily create multiple comics with a standard look. If
you want ALL elements to be created in a particular style then Update
the 'default' style.
Creating a new style
- Create a
new comic
- Place an
element (for example, a panel) on the page.

- Bring up
the Details interface by choosing
View->Show Details or by clicking on the Details" tab.
- All the
attributes for the object, and the style for
the object are displayed - lets change the background colour
to
red.

- Change
the color and watch the panel background
color change. Notice now the pencil icon next to the style
name.
This shows there is a variation to the style.

- Press
the 'Save As' button, and a pop-up menu asks you
to name your new style. Lets call it "Big Red".
Press OK.

- You can
now use this style for other elements.
Updating a style
- Create a
new Panel by dragging it out from the
Library

- Now set
it's style to the new red filled style we just
created by choosing it in Style Attributes (In Details). You can see the style we just made.
-
- Make a
change to the panel, for example, lets make
the frame thicker.
- Now
there is pencil icon next to our style. That
means we have made a variation.
- We like
our change, and we want all elements with
the same style to change as well, so we click "✓ Update"

- The
asterisk* now dissapears. Also our first panel
now has a thick border as well - it uses the same style
Reverting to a style
At any point you can revert back to the original style chosen by
selecting 'Revert'. A pop up menu will remind you that you will loose
your changes to the style - to prevent this you should update the
current style or create a new style.
Stylesheets
Once you have collected a group of styles you like, then you might like
to use this entire collection in a new comic, or in an existing comic.
You might also like to make this new set of styles your default
stylesheet, so, for example, if you find you always like your Balloons
to be a particular way, then you can make them the default.
Stylesheets contain all the available styles for all available objects, like balloons, panels etc.
Here's how you go about creating a stylesheet with a custom balloon style as an option.
- Create a new style and drag in a caption/balloon - you have to
get out of text edit mode because otherwise the font picker is changing
the selected characters rather than the caption element style.
- Click on the font style picker for the caption
- Pick a new font size.
- Update the style (under Details)
- Next caption to be dragged in has the new font size by default.
This will then be the default for that comic.
You can now go to File->Save Stylesheet to create a stylesheet with
the collection of updated styles for all objects. If you'd like to
apply this to any existing comics, then you can go File->Load
Stylesheet and load the appropriate stylesheet. For example, you might
make a stylesheet which has a series of "ghoulish"Balloons and Panels.
When you Load this in an exisiting document, the styles of any object
which has the same name will be replaced with the new style, and there
will be a new selection of styles (the ones you made) available for all
objects.
If you want these styles applied always to a new comic, then you have to change the master stylesheet.
- Configure the defaults as you want for the various elements -
basically set up a page and drop elements on it - configure the default
style for each as you like them (then update them in details).
- File->Save Stylesheet... (name something memorable!)
- Quit Comic Life completely and relaunch Comic Life
- In Preferences (Comic Life > Preferences...) choose the saved stylesheet.
- Then create a new Comic document. All New comics will use that stylesheet.