December 4, 2009

Adding pages and Open as template

Why am I touching on this subject  - open as template - again? Old gypsy users are familiar with this feature as this was the only way they could do wordbooks or layer or resize images based on another image. But for new users - well it's something new :) :) and strange. 
With the new adding a page feature  (that + sign at the top right gray area of the mat when pressed opens a new page) this feature automatically comes up and  when they go to the next page - questions may arise   - "what's  that light gray image ?" - "why can't I delete?", " will it cut?"
So here I go lecturing...  :)
the image/images that open up on the following pages which are copies of the images in all the previous pages (yes all - page 3 will have both the image of page 1 and page 2) - opens as light gray  and is a template and  it will not cut. It's just a ghost to help you in placement. It's the automatically done for you. Earlier before pages the same thing was possible by using open as template. We could make word books then or other stuff only by opening the parent file as open as template and design as page option wasn't there and we couldn't copy across files. 
Unfortunately now they don't have a selective off feature for this in the pages. So even though it's helpful most of the times - by the time you reach page 5 - it becomes a jumble. Only way to switch all the noise out is by pressing preview and this effectively freezes all actions so is not much help. Hopefully this , hide contour and DS one page dumping will be fixed in successive updates.
Coming back to pages and templates
(Some more point to note  - each page has to be cut individually or separately. They are different mats  They are put together like pages only for our organizational purpose. As far as cricut is concerned it can see only 1 mat at a time. Also when pressing preview you can see what is going to be cut just like in welding. Welded images go red (outline) and other ordinary images are dark black (again outline)).
-  I have an early video on open as template in wordbooks. This feature still works. And now you just are adopting it into the new page feature and it is automatically done for you. 

So when do you use open as template feature? Is it completely redundant. No.
If for  e.g I were to do a wordbook, I would just use the new page feature.
But if I wanted to do let's say a new bag and I want just some dimensions to remain same so I would in this case I would want another file and would use the original as " open as template" . Another use can be as someone in our MB suggested - She has all her card dimensions in different files (named that way too) so that when she wants to make a card with particular dimension she just whips out one of her respective card files   - opens it as template and then designs the card based on these dimensions.

Well that's just a little bit about Gypsy feature I wanted to share.
So folks please do comment. You can tell me straight if I am boring you.
You can also request if you want me to :) lecture on something that would help you and if I know the feature I will post and if you want a video showing some technique on gypsy please do also comment or email.

2 comments:

  1. Great tutorial. A good reminder for us oldies and a huge help for the newbies. Keep up the good work ... it really is appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another very helpful post, thank you.

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