Last weekend I took my niece and nephew to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, UT. Since it was my first visit, I was trying to view the exhibits in a systematic fashion to make sure we didn’t miss anything. In the special Amazon exhibit, I spent five minutes trying to get my little niece to look at a blue frog that didn’t interest her all (my nephew and I both thought it was the coolest thing we’d ever seen).

Eventually I decided to stop trying to control her experience and just let her explore the aquarium in her own haphazard, two-and-a-half-year-old way. I even bought her a pink stuffed Nemo that she picked out in the gift shop, although I’m pretty sure every clownfish I’ve seen in nature has been orange.

I hope that when you use MyCanvas to build a photo book or poster, you feel free to explore, experiment and express your own personality. Our product development team has tried to give you as much creative freedom as possible, so that you don’t feel like there’s a control-freak aunt standing over your shoulder telling you where to put your photos or what colors you can choose for a border, background or caption (or stuffed clownfish).

This month we’ve added several new features that give you more flexibility than ever. For the examples below, I created a page in our “Baby Girl Pink” photo book theme. These screen shots are a little grainy, but I think you’ll get the idea. Although I’m using a photo book page to demonstrate the new features, they apply to posters and calendars as well.

First, our new layout switching feature lets you easily change the layout of an existing page. Go to the Layouts tab in the left panel to see the available options. In the top part of the Layouts tab, you’ll see the basic layouts that aren’t associated with a theme. In the bottom part, you can view the layouts for a particular theme. Use the drop-down menu to narrow down the options according to the number of photos you want to include on the page. There are also a few text-only layouts.

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By hovering over page thumbnails in the Layouts tab, I can see how this page would look if I applied a different layout.

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When I find the layout I like best, I just left click on the thumbnail to apply the layout to my page.

What if I want to swap these two photos so that the one on the left is in the right image box and vice-versa? Instead of finding the photo thumbnails and reapplying them to the page, I can use our new photo swapping tool to make the switch. When you’re on a page with two or more photos and you select one of the photos, you’ll see an icon in the top right corner with an arrow and two little boxes.

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Click on that icon, hold down your left mouse key and then drag and drop the photo into the other image box.

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When you release the cursor, the two photos will have switched places.

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You can do the same thing with text, too. Click on any text box. Then click the text swapping icon (which looks exactly like the photo swapping icon) in the top right corner of the text box.

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Hold down your left mouse key and then drag and drop the text box into another text box on the page.

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The caption from Text Box A will appear in Text Box B, but with all of the formatting attributes (font size, etc.) of the original caption in Text Box B.

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The last feature I want to show you is our new panning tool, which lets you drag a photo within an image box. You’ve always been able to pan in MyCanvas, but we’ve made it easier and more intuitive. Whenever you click on an image that’s pannable, you’ll see a compass-like icon in the middle of the image.

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What I mean by “pannable” is that the original photo has been cropped. Either part of the photo got cropped off when you dropped it into an image box or you manually cropped the photo after you placed it on the page. Panning lets you adjust which parts of the photo show up and which parts get cropped off. Place your cursor in the circle, hold down your left mouse key and drag the photo within the image box.

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Once you start panning, you’ll see the whole photo. The parts that are cropped out will be transparent. When you’re done panning, just release your mouse key.

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By the way, we recently added more than 2,000 new K&Co. scrapbook embellishments, as well as a new collection of masks with brushed edges. Be sure to check out our new features and content and then let me know what you think!