New MyCanvas features: Layout switching, photo swapping, better panning
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!
May 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Somebody just posted a comment on one of my older blog posts to ask about the recommended resolution of photos used in MyCanvas. Since other people may be wondering about this too, here’s my response:
The standard resolution for photos published on the Web is 75 dots per inch (DPI). For printing you need a resolution of about 300 DPI to get good results. So if you’re making an 8″x8″ photo book and you want the photo to fill the whole page, you’ll want to use a photo with an original size of about 2400×2400 pixels. The guideline of 300 DPI is conservative — you could get away with a slightly lower resolution — but if you stick with 300 you’ll always be safe.
Keep in mind that if you want to enlarge an image after you place it on the page, you’ll need to start with an even higher resolution. For example, if you have a 4″x6″ photo and you want to make it 50% bigger, you’ll want to start with a resolution of about 450 DPI or higher, which would work out to 1800×2700 pixels.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Thank you so much for adding all these new features…they are just what i was waiting for. One thing that would help would be to speed up the opening and closing of pages…finished and not….also all the goodies to add…takes so long to open them. I have high speed so it is not my connections
thank you again