PageMaker: Masking

Masking means cover or frame the object/image with a shape, through which you can see the object. For this you require one image and a polygon shape. Now, follow below steps.

Open Adobe PageMaker and click File menu then New which opens the Document Setup window. Now, select PageSize as Letter and Orientation Wide. Check the image below to set the remaining fields.

Click Ok to proceed to next

Add the picture into the document you just created. You can select image through picture palette or by going to menu and select File->Place(or Ctrl+D) and select the picture you like and drag in your document [In this method when you select an image your mouse pointer will change then click drag your mouse pointer]
Click to learn the basics of PageMaker

Now select Polygon tool from the tool box and select Element from menu and click Polygon settings. In this window you can change the sides and radius of your polygon. Refer below image:

In Polygon settings window Number of Sides determines how many sides you need.Just give the number or slide the button between the left- right arrow mark or just click the left arrow mark to decrease or right arrow to increase the number of sides.
The Star inset let you change the desired inner diameter of your polygon.
When your setting are finished select the polygon tool and click and drag your mouse on the document to draw the polygon with your changes in effect. See the image below

Now, place the polygon you drew on the the image. For that you must select the polygon by clicking on its border using pointer(arrow) tool. On clicking it you can see small square dot around the polygon. Now you can move the polygon by clicking and holding on on polygon(not on dots). To change the size of polygon you must do the previous and click and drag only any dot mark on the corners of the polygon. To darken or increasing the thickness of the polygon border, click on Element menu and select Stroke and choose your desired thickness. After the getting the required things, select both image and polygon. To do that just hold the shift key and click on image and click on the border of the polygon.

Now click the menu item Element and select Mask. The image will be visible only through the polygon you just drawn or the Polygon act as frame or mask for the image. See image below:

To undo masking, while both image and polygon are selected, just go to menu Element then select Unmask.

PageMaker: Designing NewsPaper

A newspaper is a printed media published daily or weekely in a folded, unstapled format containing information about current events, along with covering various fields such as, business,sports, arts, politics, weather forecasts, etc. It also includes fields such as birthday, obituaries, advertisements, opinions etc.

Newspaper comes in different sizes(WxH) such as Broadsheet, Berliner and Tabloid.

Broadsheet

Which has the measure of 23.5" x 29.5" or 13.5" x 21.5"

Berliner

Dimension of this type is 12.4" x 18.5"

Tabloid

Which has the measure of 11.0" x 16.9"

Compact

Which has the measure of 10.5" x 13.5"

Almost all major newspapers in India are broadsheets. Tabloids are mostly found in small-circulation local or rural papers.

Let's get started by designing broadsheet size, 13.5" x 21.5", newspaper. Open Page maker and choose File from menu then New and fill the field in the Document set-up window

****Check the unit(mm,inch or cm) while filling the fields. If the set-up is in mm(millimeter) then dimension in inches must converted into mm(1 inch=25mm)

Now click OK. Now, you are in design area. Select the Layout menu and select Column Guides and give 4 in Number of column field and leave the Space between Column field as default.

Now, give your Newspaper a Title. For that, draw rectangle for title section and two rectangle on left and right side of rectangle of title see the image below.

By, using some dummy texts and images, just create some news for your newspaper. Check below image to see how

*** For arranging text in document draw/use rectangle tool and put the text in it. Here, in above image you can see the arrangement of rectangles.

After doing the above mentioned, the design would look like this.

To clear the all border of the rectangle drawn, select the rectangle using pointer tool and click Paper in the color palette. Do this for all rectangle to disappear border. Below image show the color palette window.(Click to see various window in Pagemaker)

Color Palette window
*** If your application does not show this window, select menu Window->Show Colours

Finalized design is shown below.

( Because of the size of the document/paper the smaller text does not show clearly.) Here, the design is only a generalized view of the News paper. Try your own, better design and share your experience.

Thank you