Presets Palette

Use the Presets palette to apply inks, load inks, and delete inks.

To Open the Presets Palette:

Do one of the following:

To color the pen outline of an unselected object, Shift + drag a color from the Presets palette to the object.

Presets Palette

Ink types

Select the type of ink you want to apply.

Color: Inks using solid colors.

Gradient: Inks with smooth blends between two or more colors.

Hatches: Inks with line patterns. Hatch inks can incorporate other pen and fill inks.

Texture: Inks with patterns of raster images. Texture inks can include other inks as backgrounds.

Symbol: Inks with patterns of vector objects, image objects, or text objects. Symbol inks can include any other ink as a background.

Pattern: Inks that are 72 dpi bitmap representations with a fixed size of 8 x 8 pixels.

Favorites: Drag inks here to add them to your favorites, or use the Favorite button.

Preset inks

Select an ink in the grid. Use the scroll bars if all the preset inks aren’t visible.

Indicates no ink color

Edit

Click to modify selected ink.

Pen ink

Click to select pen inks for object outlines.

Fill ink

Click to select fill inks for the insides of objects.

Lock icon

Select the Lock icon to remain on your last open ink type, regardless of your last selected ink. For example, if you have the Presets palette open to the Gradient inks, and you enable the Lock icon, you will see the Gradient inks the next time you open the Preset palette — even if your selected ink is still a texture.

Favorites icon

See Creating Favorite Inks.

Trash can

Drag inks here to delete them from the preset inks.

Palette menu

Click to access the Palette menu.

Recently used inks

Select a recently used ink from the column of inks on the right of the palette. Press the Clear button to clear the recently used inks.

Keep Last Used Attributes

Enable on the Pen color, Fill color, Stroke, Dash, or Arrow pop-up palettes to retain your last used settings.

Loading, Appending, Saving, and Clearing Inks

The Presets palette menu, located at the bottom-right corner of the palette, contains all the commands for you to load, append, save, or clear inks.

Commands correspond to the name of the current ink type.

When you add or delete inks in the palette, the changes are recorded in a Canvas X Draw Settings file, not in the Canvas X Draw document, so the palette contents remain the same the next time you use Canvas X Draw.

Canvas X Draw won’t load or append inks that don’t correspond to the current ink type.

Identifying Inks

You can display color names that identify the inks that are stored in the Presets palette. This function affects all ink types in the palette. If an ink was not given a name, no name will appear.

You can also differentiate between RGB, CMYK, and spot colors when working with color inks by showing color icons.

If the color ink type is selected, the inks will indicate RGB, CMYK, or grayscale percentages. For gradient, hatch, symbol, pattern, and texture inks, a name is displayed.

To Display Ink Names:

Open the Inks palette menu and choose Display Color Names.

To Hide the Ink Names:

Open the Inks palette menu and deselect Display Color Names.

To Identify Inks with Color Icons:

Color icons help you identify RGB, CMYK, and spot colors when working with the color inks.

Selecting Show Color Icons only affects the appearance of the color inks in the Presets palette. The other inks are not affected.

To Display Color Icons:

Select the color ink icon and open the palette menu. Choose Show Color Icons.

To Hide the Color Icons:

Choose Hide Color Icons in the menu.

RGB color

CMYK color

Spot color

The color inks can contain inks defined with RGB, CMYK, grayscale, and spot colors.

When working with color inks, if the Ink tab contains only CMYK colors, no symbols appear when you choose Show Color Icons.

Arranging Ink Cells

To Rearrange Ink Cells in the Presets Palette:

Drag a cell within the palette and drop it where you want to place it.

To Move Contiguous Ink Cells to a New Location:

Click the first ink cell and then Shift+click another cell. Canvas X Draw highlights all cells between the colors you click.

To Select Non-Contiguous Cells:

Ctrl+click the cells you want to select. Drag the selected cells to a new location in the palette.

Applying Preset Inks

To Apply Inks to Existing Objects:

Select the objects and then choose pen and fill inks.

To Change the Inks That Canvas X Draw Applies to New Vector and Text Objects:

Deselect all objects, then choose pen and fill inks. The ink icons in the toolbox show the current inks.

To Remove an Ink from the Palette:

Drag the ink cell to the trash can.

Since pen inks are applied to the strokes of objects, the appearance of an object’s pen ink is affected by the shape of the object’s stroke. (See How Inks Affect Strokes.)