Welcome To Designer's Studio! If you're new to the Designer's Studio application, or graphics editing in general, this chapter is for you! Covered here are the basic editing tools common to most graphics applications, including Designer's Studio, as well as simple ways you can use them to create and enhance the variety of file formats that Designer's Studio allows you to open and edit. Designer's Studio's own unique and powerful editing tools are dealt with in later chapters. Introduction Changing the standard “look and feel” of your Macintosh has, in the past, been clumsy and difficult. With the introduction of such programs as Kaleidoscope and IconDropper, making these changes has been simplified to a double-click. However, creating the interfaces and icons has remained a laborious, and sometimes tedious, process. Until Designer’s Studio! Designer’s Studio allows even the most novice Macintosh user to customize his or her environment with the ease of a simple painting program. Folders, icons, Kaleidoscope color schemes, picture clippings, StartupScreens and desktop patterns are all instantly created from your original drawings. If you can learn to use Designer’s Studio’s beautifully designed set of tools, you can make your computer into anything you want. So, with that as an incentive, on to the tools! Basic Editing Tools Below is a screen capture of the Designer's Studio Art Tools palette. Clicking on the individual icons will change the currently active editing tool and allow you to use it to change opened graphics files.   Drawing Tools Pencil Using the pencil, you can draw on the screen just as you would on paper: the dragged pencil tool creates a pixel-wide path in the color you have chosen. Holding down the shift key before dragging the pencil will force it to draw a straight line. The pencil has a very useful hidden feature: when using it to draw with one color onto a canvas of another color, pencil marks will appear as you would expect. However, drawing with one color on top of pixels of the same color will cause them to disappear. It's like turning the pencil over to use the built-in eraser! (To select the pencil using the keyboard, hit "p") Eraser Not strictly thought of as a drawing tool, the eraser is just that. Moving the eraser over parts of your graphic will erase all colors, indiscriminately, leaving all erased pixels filled with the background color (usually white, but this can be specified). (To select the eraser using the keyboard, hit "e") Paint Bucket Clicking on blank canvas with the paint bucket tool will fill the entire area with your chosen color. This saves coloring an area in by hand with the pencil. Just like the pencil, the paint bucket has its tricks, too. Clicking an area of connected pixels, all of the same color, will fill only those pixels with the currently chosen foreground color. In the example below, we used the paint bucket to click on the yellow pixels. They were immediately replaced with our chosen color, cyan. Note that “connected pixels” are only considered connected in vertical and horizontal lines. Diagonally connected pixels will not be filled. (To select the paint bucket using the keyboard, hit "b")   Line The line tool draws a line, as if you had placed a ruler on your monitor. You specify the endpoints and the line connecting those two will be filled with the currently selected color. Holding down the shift key as you create a line will create only vertical, horizontal or 45 degree diagonal lines. (To select the line using the keyboard, hit "l") Area Tools Filled/Empty Rect Simply, the rect tool draws rectangles. Clicking and dragging will create a rectangle of the size you specify. The rect comes in two flavors: empty or filled. Empty will simply draw the outline of the rectangle in the selected color, while filled will draw a block of color. Holding down the shift key while dragging will create a perfect square. (To select the filled/empty rect using the keyboard, hit "1"/"2") Filled/Empty Rounded Rect The round rect operates almost exactly like the default rect tool, but creates rectangles with rounded corners. Again, you may specify either a filled or empty rounded rect. (To select the filled/empty round rect using the keyboard, hit "3"/"4") Oval Click and drag as if you were drawing a rectangle with the rect tool. The result will be an oval that fits exactly in that imaginary box. Holding down the shift key while dragging will create a perfect circle. Once again, you may specify either a filled or empty oval. (To select the filled/empty oval using the keyboard, hit "5"/"6") Selection Tools Eye Dropper Since there are many colors to choose from in the color palette, it's easy to forget the color you were just working with. The eye dropper lets you select a foreground color, not only from the editing area or color palette, but from any active Designer’s Studio window. Hint: holding down the option key while using any tool will temporarily change that tool into the eye dropper for quick color changes. Releasing the option key will cause the tool to revert to the previously chosen one. (To select the eye dropper using the keyboard, hit "i") Marquee This is the standard selection tool. It allows certain areas of your drawing to be chosen so that you can perform editing functions upon all the selected pixels at once. The default selection of the marquee tool acts exactly like the rect tool in that only rectangular areas can be selected. However, holding down the command key while using the marquee will allow oval shapes to be selected, as well. Lastly, moving the cursor over a selected area will change the cursor to a hand. This allows you to click and drag the selected area to a new location on the drawing canvas. To deselect, simply click once on the drawing canvas, outside the selected area. Deselecting a large area can be tricky. However, simply clicking on the marquee tool a second time will disable the current selection. (To select the marquee using the keyboard, hit "m") Lasso Like the marquee, this creates a selection area. However, the lasso is used like the pencil in that it allows complete freehand selection of a non-rectangular area. If the lasso selection is not completely closed, Designer’s Studio will complete the selection for you by joining the first and last points with a line. (To select the lasso using the keyboard, hit "o") Magic Wand The magic wand tool follows the same selection rules as the paint bucket in that only horizontally and vertically adjacent pixels will be affected. Click in an area of color and that entire area will be selected with the standard “marching ants” outline. You may then manipulate the selected area using the other available tools. (To select the magic wand using the keyboard, hit "w")   Rotation Tools Flip Horizontal/Vertical These buttons reverse the position of the currently active resource with respect to its layout. Clicking the flip vertical button will cause the resource to be inverted, with the top now being displayed at the bottom and the bottom at the top. Clicking the flip horizontal button will cause the resource to be inverted, with the left now being displayed at the right and the right at the left. Rotate 90° Left/Right These buttons rotate the currently active resource within the resource editor window. Clicking the rotate 90° left button will cause the top of the resource to rotate to the left side of the window while the bottom would move to the right. Clicking the rotate 90° right button will cause the top of the resource to rotate to the right side of the window while the bottom would move to the left. ----- Designer's Studio 1.5 © 1997 - 1998 Akamai Design Tom Connolly And Dorian Weisel