Align & Distribute - Corel Photo-Paint's Powerful Layout Tool: Part 9

Align and Distribute in Corel Photo-Paint

by
David
Mutch
Aug, 2003

Align & Distribute: Corel Photo-Paint’s Powerful Layout Tool

PART 9: Align & Distribute Tips and Tricks.

If you are an experienced Photo-Paint user you may have come here directly from the introduction of this tutorial. Even though you may think that Align & Distribute functions are pretty straight forward and you know all about them (especially if you are looking at these from an Adobe Photo Shop point-of-view, and you would be correct for that program), you may want to think again. Because Photo-Paint’s Align and Distribute functions are far more elaborate and powerful. You may want to briefly skim through the previous sections just to find out how much better Corel Photo-Paint does this important job, and how you can use it to your best advantage.

These Align & Distribute Tips and Tricks may help you work faster and better.

1.       Use the shortcut CTRL+A (v8,9,10) or CTRL+SHIFT+A (v11+) to align and distribute objects.

2.       In Photo-Paint 11, use ALT+CTRL to copy-drag the Align and Distribute command icon from the Objects menu back onto the Property bar (advanced section) for the Object Pick Tool.

3.       You can use Align & Distribute at almost any time, using almost any tool.

4.        Use the Live Preview button to avoid unnecessary undo and redo steps.

5.       The order of the objects in the Object Docker determines in which order objects are aligned in document-centric alignments.

6.       The Active object is used as the alignment focus when aligning multiple objects in the To Active mode.

7.       If no object is previously selected and marquee selection is used, the topmost object in the Objects Docker becomes the active object.

8.       If a single object is already selected and then other objects selected using marquee selection, the original singly selected object will remain as the active object.

9.       The active object within a set of selected objects can be changed by CTRL+clicking a different selected object’s thumbnail in the Object Docker.

10.     To quickly align objects to a single plane of the document only, choose To Center of Document first, then switch to Selected To Document and UNCHECK one of the Center checkboxes.

11.     To quickly align objects to a single plane of the document only, choose To Center of Document first, then switch to To Active and UNCHECK one of the Center checkboxes.

12.     Make the grid visible (View > Grid or CTRL+SHIFT+E) before you use Align To Grid for either objects or masks.

13.     Vertical align controls force each object to align itself to the closest horizontal grid line.

14.     Horizontal align controls force each object to align itself to the closest vertical grid line.

15.    You can align and distribute objects all in one step, before you need to commit the action.

16.    For some complex alignments and distributions you may need to do several Align & Distribute steps sequentially, committing each step.

17.    Operations in the Align Tab and in the Distribute Tab are linked. The result is dependent on the settings in both dialogues. A change in one dialogue can cause a previously made choice in the other tab to be neutralized because they are incompatible.

18.    Mask > Align is for aligning a single mask to either the document, to objects or to a grid. In this respect, Photo-Paint deals with only one mask at any one time. The mask align cannot be used to align non-contiguous regions within the same mask.

19.    Mask > Align can be extremely useful if you move or copy masks from one image to another.