How to create a Greeting Card

Discuss and share Pixelmator Pro resources such as templates, mockups, and tutorials.
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2019-12-15 02:07:31

I can't immediately see how to create a white card with an image occupying say two thirds of the card.
My assumption is that you do something like the following.
Create a base layer, add a rectangle and fill white.
Import the photo into the document, thus creating a second layer.

Now the part where I seem to be having a problem. I want to crop the picture so that it occupies about 2/3 of the card.
However, it seems that cropping the picture causes the whole document to be cropped. That is to say for any layer you can only see a panel the size of the crop that was just completed.

So how do I add a picture and crop it to fit the size that I want.

I suppose on reflection I could calculate the size I want and crop the picture before adding it to the document but that seems unnecessarily complicated.


Thanks.
User avatar

2019-12-15 06:08:24

Hi strategist.
I think the main problem is one of language. In the language of Pixelmator Pro, Crop is a whole canvas operation and the crop tool will therefore crop every layer. Here’s what I wrote a couple of weeks back when a similar question came up in the Pixelmator forum.
http://www.pixelmator.com/community/vie ... =3&t=17341
To that I’d also like to add another technique, and one that is particularly suited to a greetings card as it allows you to swap out the image while leaving the mask in place. And that is to create a clipping mask. Clipping masks are similar to but distinct from opacity masks (a.k.a. layer masks). Instead of using a mask attached to a layer they use one layer to provide the mask for another.

To use a clipping mask for a greetings card:
1. Create a rectangle where you want your image to be (it could be any shape but I’m guessing you want a rectangle). It doesn’t matter what colour. It just matters that the rectangle is opaque and that the rest of the layer is transparent.
2. Place your image in the layer above the rectangle and move it so that it is over the top of it.
3. With the image layer selected in the layers panel, make it a clipping mask (Format > Mask > Add Clipping Mask or right click on the image layer and Add Clipping Mask).
4. Adjust the size and position of the image layer to taste.

Hope this helps.
- Stef.
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2019-12-15 06:55:55

@st3f
Clipping solved it nicely.

Thanks very much.