www.belightsoft.com/disccover Start of Help > Editing the Content of Disc Labels and Covers

Working with Smart Shapes

Clipart

Smart Shapes can be used to decorate your document or for other purposes.
To add a shape, open the Clipart tab on the Source panel (Window > Clipart > Smart Shapes). Drag and drop a shape to the design or click on it.

Most shapes behave like ordinary images - they can be moved, resized. Other operations on shapes are available in the Inspector window. Open it by using the Inspector button on the toolbar or through the Window > Inspector menu.

Operations common for different objects are described in Basic Operations on Objects.

In the Inspector, you can change attributes of the selected shape. The main difference between shapes and images: shapes are vector objects, so you have more control on them.
Each shape has border line and filling as attributes. You can find them on the Fill & Shadow tab. You can also apply a shadow to a smart shape, change its transparency and so on.

 

Filling a Smart Shape with an Image

The Smart Shape can be filled not only with solid color, but also with an image. To insert an image into the Smart Shape, select the shape, then drag and drop the image from the Clipart into the shape.

Alternatively:

  1. Select the shape.

  2. Open the Fill & Shadow tab of the Inspector (menu: Window > Inspector > Fill & Shadow).

  3. Enable the Fill option.

  4. Choose Image Fill in the drop-down list.

  5. Drag the image into the box on the left from the Browse button.

  6. Choose the appropriate way of filling in the Scale type option.

When you resize a Smart Shape, the inserted image gets resized too.

Scale Type

Scale type affects how the image will be modified when inserted into the Smart Shape (blue frame in pictures below).
ScaleType1 Original Smart Shape
ScaleType2 Original image
ScaleType3 Fill – does not change the aspect ratio of the image. A part of the image may not be seen in the Smart Shape.
ScaleType4 Stretch - the whole image gets into the Smart Shape, the image may be deformed.
ScaleType5 Fit - the whole image gets into the Smart Shape, the proportion of sides will not change. Blank space may be left inside the Smart Shape.

 

Special Attributes

For some shapes, the Curve and Side Count parameters (from the Geometry tab of Inspector) can be adjusted.

Adjust Smart Shape

For example, the 5-point Star can change number of rays by altering the Side Count parameter and the angle of rays by altering the Curve parameter.

Star

 

In addition to Smart Shapes, the Clipart collection contains a collection of Basic Shapes: circles, rectangles, arrows and other. They are PDF vector images (they don't have the special attributes of smart shapes). To find them, open the Clipart Collection tab of the Source panel (menu Window > Clipart > Clipart Collection) and select Basic Shapes in the drop-down list.


Smart Shape or Image?

A rectangular Smart Shape filled with an image may look like the image itself. You may need to know for sure what was used in the design.

Smart Shapes (when selected) have all the Fill items enabled in the drop-down list on the Fill & Shadow tab of Inspector. When you select an image, Image Fill is not enabled. Use this to distinguish the objects.