Adding Photo Placeholders

When someone uses your template, they will drag and drop an image into what is known as a photo placeholder.

To create a photo placeholder, simply draw a rectangle around the region in which you wish to create the placeholder.

To draw a rectangle, click and hold the left mouse button, drag the mouse so that the rectangle with the desired shape forms, then release the left mouse button.

Although the photo placeholder is rectangular, only the parts of the image that lie behind transparent parts of the overlay image will show. Therefore you can create the effect of placeholders that are any shape you desire.

Once you have the rectangle in the correct place, press the 'Add' button in the 'Photo Placeholders' section of the 'Modify Template Properties' dialog window.

You may repeat the process of adding placeholders as many times as you wish to allow users to drag and drop multiple images into your template.

Once you have added a photo placeholder you can adjust its properties by clicking within the placeholder rectangle in the Active Layout frame. This will bring up the 'Edit Image Properties' dialog window.

1.	Transparency Properties: Transparency is a feature of Photo Layout Event and will be covered in a later chapter of this help file.

Brightness, Contrast and Color Properties: This section allows you to make adjustments to the image that is dropped into this placeholder. The digital photograph that will be placed in a template will most likely have been taken in different lighting conditions than any images already in the template. You can compensate for this by adjusting the contrast and brightness of the image. Photo Layout even allows you to adjust the brightness of each of the primary color components in the image. For instance, if the template contained images of a sunset, you may wish to increase the brightness of the red component for a more natural look.

If you would like to remove a photo placeholder, select the unwanted placeholder from the 'Photo Placeholders' list from the 'Modify Template Properties' dialog window, and press the 'Delete' button next to the 'Photo Placeholders' list.