LESSON 4 : WORKING WITH GRAPHICS

Drawing;
You can draw regular shapes such as boxes, lines ellipse, polygons and
circles using their relevant tools in the tool box .You can apply stroke and fill in your
drawing .Stroke is the line or border around the graphic shape and fill
Is what’s inside the graphic shape (shading paper etc)
You can change the stroke and fill of a selected object by selecting the menu
item Element> Fill or Element > stroke or both Element> Fill and stroke.

Use the fill and Stroke commands in the Elements menu to enhance the appearance of the
drawings

Importing;
Use the place command found in the file menu to import a graphic file into your
Page Maker document. When the place command is chosen , Page Maker displays a
standard file dialog for the file to be selected .When graphics is placed a progress box
appears, click or ‘cancel’ to halt the process.
The mouse is then ‘loaded’ with a copy of the imported file and changes to
icon showing the type of file placed.
N/B should you decide not to place a file after the mouse is loaded , simply
click on any tool in the tool box.

Text Wrap;
Use the Text Wrap command found in the Element menu to control how text
will flow around an independent graphic. How a text flows will depend upon the shape
of the graphic’s boundary.
To add text to any object;
i. Click on the graphic object to select it.
ii. Choose Text Wrap from the element menu.
iii. Choose a Text Wrap option.
 Choose from the Text Wrap dialog box the way text would wrap around the graphic

The rectangular text wrap has the ability to wrap the text around the boundary
of the object. This option is also used to remove a custom text boundary.
iv. Choose a text flow option.
 Column break stops flowing text at the top of the graphic.
 Jump over maker text to stop at the top of the graphic and continues to
flow below it.
 Wrap around makes text to flow around all four sides of the graphic.
v. Stand off value indicates the distance the boundaries will stay from the actual
graphic.
vi. Select Wrap Text on same layer only if you want text on other layers to
ignore the text boundary.
vii. Click OK.

Cropping/ Trimming graphs;

To trim a graphic using the cropping tool.
i. Select the cropping tool and select the graphic that you want to crop.
ii. Position the cropping tool so that a handle shows through the centre of the
tool.
 iii. Hold down the mouse button to turn the cropping tool into a two way
arrow and drag until only the part of the graphic you want in your
publication remains.
To show more of the graphic drag away from the centre of the graphic.
iv. To move the graphic within the frame, position the cropping tool at the
centre of the graphic and hold down the mouse.
When the hand appears, drag until you see the part you want to appear in
your publication .Then release the mouse button.

Changing the stacking order of objects

Pagemaker arranges objects in the order that they are brought in to the publication. The
object that is brought first will appear to be behind those objects that are brought later. This is
what is called the stacking order of objects. The position they take cannot be easily changed. One
may find it frustrating to change their position under ordinary circumstances. However the
Arrange command in Pagemaker can be user to change the stacking order.

Pictures arranged in their stacking order

In the pictures above the flower picture was the latest to be brought into the publication since it
appears to be infront of the rest while the picture with the castle on the hills was the first one to
be brought in the publication. In the next set of the same pictures the Elements>Arrange>Send
backward commands have been used to change the stacking order of the three pictures.
NB/ You must select the picture whose position relative to the others is supposed to be ajusted.
In the pictures above the flower picture was selected by clicking it before clicking on
Element>Arrange>Send Backward commands. You can use other subcommands under
Arrange to move a picture to the front, forward and to the back. Please try to do this on your on.
Flower picture moved backward hence the stacking order has changed

END OF LESSON