Editor

Elements & shapes

A page can hold more than its main picture. Add ready-made graphics from Elements, draw shapes such as frames, badges and writing lines, and stack everything in layers. Graphics and shapes don’t use any of your pages.

Which pages take them

Every page except a puzzle page (sudoku, maze, word search, crossword, cryptogram) holds graphics and shapes. On a puzzle page, Elements still lets you browse, and says “This page can’t take graphics.”

Add a ready-made graphic

1
Open Elements
Open the page you want to decorate, then click Elements on the Add rail (the column of tools down the left edge of the editor).
2
Find a graphic
Type in the search box (“Search: cat, frame, pumpkin…”) and results update as you type. Or browse: click Favourites or a shelf, then one of the shelf’s categories. The shelves are Animals, Nature & florals, Frames & decor, Bubbles & banners, Food & sweets, Seasons & holidays, Things & places, Characters & fantasy and Shapes & doodles. Graphics you’ve opened before show under Recently used.
Two switches narrow the results:
- Line art or Colour. It starts on line art in coloring and puzzle books, and on colour in storybooks and comics.
- All, Illustrations (drawn for ColorCraft) or Icons.
3
Check it and add it
Click a graphic to see it bigger, with its Category, Kind, Print size (“Sharp up to N in on its long side”) and Use — every graphic is free to use in books you sell. Click one of its words to search for more like it, or Back to results.
Click Add to page. The graphic lands on the page, selected, and you’ll see Added to page. Drag it into place and drag a corner to size it.

The Elements panel beside the Add rail on a coloring book: the search box, the Line art and Colour switch set to Line art, the All, Illustrations and Icons switch, the shelf buttons starting with Favourites, and a grid of line-art graphics. — Elements: search, or browse the shelves.

One graphic opened in the Elements panel: Back to results and Add to favourites at the top, a large preview, Category, Kind, Print size and Use, its words as buttons, and the Add to page button. — A graphic's details, then Add to page.

Hover a graphic and click its star to add it to Favourites.
Nothing found? The panel says so, notes the search so the graphic may be added later, and offers the other kind (line art or colour) and a few words to try.
“This page is full”: the page has as many layers as it can hold. Remove one to add another.

Change a graphic you’ve placed

Click the graphic on the page. The context bar above the page shows its name and:

Replace opens Replace picture, the same Elements browser: pick another graphic and click Use this picture. It takes the old one’s place.
Flip ↔ and Flip ↕ mirror it left to right or top to bottom.
Forward and Backward move it one layer up or down; More has the rest of the layer menu.
Layers opens Studio; Delete removes the graphic.

Stretch a graphic too far and the bar warns “Enlarged past what prints sharply” with its resolution. Make it smaller until the warning goes.

Add a shape

Click Shapes in the context bar. Pick a shape and it’s added on top of the page, centered and selected. The shapes come in 5 groups:

Group	Shapes
Basic	Rectangle, Rounded rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond, Hexagon
Lines	Line, Dashed line, Dotted line, Arrow, Double arrow
Frames	Double frame, Scalloped frame, Wavy frame, Ticket, Cloud, Draw here box
Writing	Writing lines
Badges	Star, Burst, Heart, Seal

The Shapes pop-up open under the context bar, showing the Basic, Lines, Frames, Writing and Badges groups, each a grid of shape thumbnails with their names. — Shapes: pick one and it lands on the page.

Style a shape

Select the shape and open Studio on the Add rail. Under the layers list:

Fill: None, Colour or Gradient. A gradient takes two colours and a direction: top to bottom, left to right, diagonal, or from the centre.
Outline: its colour, its width (slide it to 0 for no outline) and Solid, Dashed or Dotted.
Effects: switch on Shadow (a colour and a distance) or Glow (a colour and a size).

Shapes in a coloring book

Coloring and puzzle books print in black and white, so colors come out as shades of grey. Draw here box and Writing lines are made for activity pages: a space to draw in and lines to write on.

Your own pictures

To use pictures you made yourself, bring them in as whole pages with Import on the page strip — see Import your own pages. On the cover, My picture on the cover’s rail adds a picture of your own to the front or back cover, whichever you’re looking at; see Covers.

Arrange items in layers

Everything on a page is a layer: the main picture, each text box, each graphic and each shape. Layers higher in the list sit on top. Click Studio on the Add rail (or Layers in the context bar) to see them under Layers · page N, top of the page first. The editor remembers whether Studio was open.

Studio open on the right of a storybook page: Layers · page 4 listing a text box and the Page picture, each with eye, lock and three-dot buttons; the Page picture row selected, with Opacity, Blend and Rotation under the list. — Studio: the page's layers, then the selected layer's settings.

A layer's three-dot menu open in Studio: Rename, Bring forward, Send backward, Bring to front, Send to back, Group, Mask with shape, Blend, Opacity and Delete. — Every layer action is in its ••• menu.

Select: click a row. Shift-click (or Cmd/Ctrl-click) another row to select both.
Reorder: drag a row up or down, or use Forward / Backward in the context bar.
Hide: the eye. A hidden layer neither shows on the page nor prints; click the eye again to bring it back.
Lock: the padlock. A locked layer can’t be moved, resized, turned or deleted until you unlock it.
Rename: double-click the row and type a name you’ll recognise.

Click a row’s ••• button, or right-click the row:

Bring forward, Send backward, Bring to front, Send to back.
Group puts two or more selected layers together, so they move as one; Ungroup splits them again. Clicking a group on the page selects the whole group; pick one of its layers in the list.
Mask with shape cuts the layer to a shape, such as an ellipse, star or heart. Release mask undoes it.
Blend (Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten) sets how a layer mixes with what’s under it, and Opacity how see-through it is.
Delete removes the layer.

The selected layer’s settings

With one layer selected, Studio shows under the list:

Opacity, a slider from 0 to 100% (not for text boxes).
Blend, the same choices as the menu.
Rotation in degrees, from −180 to 180. You can also turn a selected picture, graphic or shape with the handle above it on the page.
For a shape, its fill, outline and effects.

Below that, Page Properties shows the prompt the page was drawn from, and its bin deletes the page.

Text boxes and the border

Text boxes are layers too, listed by their first words. Their font, size and color are in the context bar — see Add text to a page. A page with a border also lists the border line; change it with Border in the context bar.

Decorate a page

Open a book, then add graphics and shapes from the Add rail and the context bar.

Start free trial Canvas & tools

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Add a ready-made graphic

Open Elements

Find a graphic

Check it and add it