Basic Item Editing
On This Page
OverviewSetting an Item's Type
Setting an Item's Title and Content
Placing and Sizing an Item
Font, Colors, Rotation, Typography, etc.
The Effects Toolbars
Miscellaneous
The "Safe" Border
Z-Order
Locked Items
Copying, Pasting, and Duplicating
Duplicating Items
Cutting, Copying and Pasting Items
Overview
There are several different kinds of item. Items have characteristics such as size and location on the card. This page discusses how to set characteristics that apply to any type of item (or at least, more than one type). In the next chapter, Item Types, you will learn about the different kinds of item and how to configure their distinctive characteristics.To set characteristics for a card item, first select the item, then use the controls described below.
Note that any editing you do will affect all
selected items. For simpllicity,
this page describes editing as if you are affecting
only one item at a time.
Also note that for some characteristics,
it may not make sense to make identical changes
to more than one item; but it is always possible.
Setting an Item's Type
See Item Types for more information.
Setting an Item's Title and Content
After selecting an item, enter any title you like in the Title field in the Item Info area. Most of the time, you should enter something descriptive of the item's purpose: the title is to help you remember what an item is for. The title will not appear on the printed cards.The easiest way to title your items is to select their Content first, then click the Autotitle button ↖️ to automatically fill in the Title field with an appropriate, unique title.
The content (more often called the "value") for most items i s drawn from the template's content source. Enter the name of a content column title in the Content combo box in the Item Info area. The easiest way to do this is to select a column name from the combo box's popup menu, which will list all available column names. (The Content combo box can also contain strings that are not column titles; these exceptions are noted in Special Column Names and Values.)
An item is selected, and has been given the title "Character Name" and associated with the column "name".
Placing and Sizing an Item
You can place and size an item in several ways, as follows.Dragging: You can move the item in the Layout area by dragging it with your mouse.
You can change the size of an item by dragging one of its four edges. By default, only the dragged edge of the item changes when you do this.
There are three options for what happens when you drag
an edge of an item. You can choose which option is in effect
by using the Drag-to-Resize Behavior button in the Card Layout Toolbar.
The options allow dragging a single edge,
dragging an edge and the opposite edge symmetrically,
or resizing the item proportionally (all edges move).
Tell me more about the Card Layout Toolbar.
The Movement Lock button prevents all items in the template from being moved or resized by dragging. This button is at the upper-left of the Layout panel. It affects all items in the layout. It does not prevent making any other kind of change to items; specifically you can still change any item's size and location by entering values in the Size and Location fields in the Item Info area.
Nudging: Use the arrow keys to move the selected item 1 point at a time, up, down, left, or right. Nudging affects only location, not size.
Item Info Size and Location fields: Enter values (in points, assuming 72 ppi) in the WxH and X, Y fields in the Item Info area. The location 0,0 will place the item in the lower left corner of the card; higher values for X and Y will move the item to the right and up, respectively. All values are in points at 72dpi. Sizes will be automatically scaled as needed for your screen or print output device's resolution, so that an item with a width of 72.0 will always print or display with a width of one inch.
Note that if you change location or size by dragging and you have multiple items selected, the secondary selections will mimic your drags. For example, dragging the right edge 10 points will change the width of all selected items by 10 points. But if you change the width in the Item Info Size field, all selected items will become that same width, even if they had been different widths before you started. The same is true for dragging an item's location versus changing it in the Item Info Location fields.
The Arrange menu: The Arrange menu in the menu bar includes commands that will adjust the size and location of the selected item relative to the card outline. For example, the Arrange > Full Bleed command will size an item to be larger than the card itself, so that it will have a 1/8" bleed outside the card outline. The Arrange menu also contains convenient commands for centering the selected item horizontally or vertically on the card, for making the item extend to the safe borders or to the cut card's edges, and for changing the Z-order of the item.
The Align and Space commands: These commands are available in the Arrange > Align and Arrange > Space submenus, and also as convenient buttons below the Layout Options panel. They are for use with at least two (or, for spacing, at least three) selected items. Use them to easily make your item line up as you like, or be spaced out equally.
Note that the Space commands affect item locations, which means that if the affected items have different sizes the space between them may not be equal; but their centers will be evenly spaced.
Use the Effects Toolbars to set display characteristics
Card Items can be given a wide variety of display characteristics, including font, text color, background color, rotations, and much more. Controls for these characteristics are found in the Effects Toolbars.Tell me about the Effects Toolbars.
The "Safe" Border
Many print-on-demand services advise keeping your card's significant content away from the edges of the card by a small margin, to allow for registration error. Multideck does not enforce this, and you may position items so that they overlap the edges of the card, to get a full bleed. However, Multideck provides a few helpful tools to help you keep your important content inside the safe area. (Multideck assumes that the safe area begins 1/8" from the physical edge of the card, because this is true for most print-on-demand services.)By default you will see a visible “safe” border in the Card Layout area. The border will appear on the screen as a blue outline in both edit and preview modes, but will never appear in printed output. The safe border will help you see that your fields are within the safe area and not too close to the edge of the card.
The Fit to Safe Margin commands in the Arrange menu align items with the safe border.
The Arrange > Full Bleed menu command expands the selected item beyond the physical edges of the card on all sides. Use that command to properly size and place a background image that will completely cover the card, even if the registration on the printed card is not perfect.
Finally, the Fit to Cut Margins commands will align an item's edges with the exact edge of the card, assuming that the cut is perfect and there are no registration errors. Aligning to the cut margins is not recommended if you ever plan to send your deck to a printing service.
Z-Order
Z-order is the back-to-front order of the items in your layout.Z-order is important because items may overlap. Those that occur later in Z-order are printed on top of those that occur earlier.
The Item List shows items in back-to-front order: the first item in the list is farthest back in Z-order, and so on.
To adjust an item's Z-Order position, use the commands in the Arrange menu or just drag the item's entry in the Items List to a different position.
Locked Items
You may lock individual items by selecting them and clicking the Lock button in the Item Info area. Locked items do not respond to the mouse, and will ignore attempts to select, drag, or resize them using the mouse. This is handy, for example, for large background images which (if left unlocked) are easy to select and move by accident.Locked items can be selected by selecting their entry in the Items List. You can alter their characteristics by using the controls in the Item Info area. For example, to unlock a locked item, select it in the Items List and then click the Lock button in the Item Info area.
Locked items are outlined in light gray (as opposed to the darker gray for unlocked items) when not selected, and in magenta (rather than red) when selected. They do not display resize handles when selected.