Rainbow_stamps_and_coins: Making your own album 16

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4.3 Personalized dividers (2 C)

A divider can be nice, and it also can add some functionallity to your page. But in the end, so far it is only a simple line. We can make that more fancy as well.

4.3.1 Adding a more fancy divider.

Decorative elements can be added at any time to your album. Most of the time, they are added at the bottom of a page, or they split a page into two parts.

The program AlbumEasy 4.2.1 sees our decoration as an ‘image’ and not as a ‘line’.

In Module 1 D we saw how to add ‘boxes’ to our pages, to insert the objects of our collection, once printed. Our decorative dividers will be added the same way, except this time, the box will be filed with the decoration. Also the box will not have a frame, as this is not really useful.

4.3.1.1 Adding an imaginary line to add the ‘boxes’.

Each image, picture, frame, box, … we add to our page, is placed on an invisible line. This line makes it possible to put two or more objects on the same hight.
The line is invisible in the end result, but it is needed for the program, to align correctly.

4.3.1.2 Two codes: to add a ‘line’ to work on

A first (new) line can be created with the code Row_Start_Es.
The ‘ES’ in this command stands for ‘Equal spacing, and starts from the middle of the line. One element on the line will be centered in the middle, more elements will be mirrored in relation to the centre of the page.

Een eerste (nieuwe) werklijn creëren we met de code Row_Start_Es..

ROW_START_ES (HN 12 0.5)

There are 3 pm’s to this command :
Font and size (not that important at the moment, as we are not adding text)

STAMP_ADD_IMG (30.0 10.0 "decoration/deco line 01.png" "" "" "" NO_FRAME)

This command makes a box where the image will come, it has no less than 7 pm’s
Width of the image in mm
Hight of the image in mm
“location : folder / name +extention of the desired image on your computer”
3 text areas (between double straght quotes) now left empty
FRAME or NO_Frame to add or omit a frame to the image box

4.3.1.3 Choosing a suitable image

Because we are adding a decoration, it is best to keep the image simple. A curly line, a small image that is related to the topic of the album…

All files in your computer hae a name and an extention. You can see it as a Alle bestanden op een computer hebben een naam en een extensie.
Let us say, a first name and a sirname. The first name is before the dot, the surname, after the dot.

Images often have the extention .JPG, .JPEG…
But it is wise to use images with a .PNG-extention. These images are more compact (take less space) and can often be reduced to the image itself, without the unnecessary white background.

A JP(E)G -image can be seen as a sticker (often square) and a PNG-image as a tattoo: only the image, the border of the image is the border of the file.
Those PNG-files are often transparent on the areas where there is ‘no image’.
This can be important if you work on a coloured background.

The more common ‘squared’ images alwasy have a white background.
And although we cannot print in ‘white’, it can make a difference when using them.

See this example for both types:

Left we see two images as a decoration, on top a JPG image (bird) and at the bottom a PNG image of a flower decoration.
On a coloured background we see the JPG image in a white box, where the flower decoration is transparent.

For this reason, it is better to choose a PNG-image (but the JPG option is also possible of course).

Make a new folder in the existing folder “examples” and name it “decorations”, look online fors ome nice PNG-images that can be used for decorations. Rename them as : deco line 01, deco line 02 etc.

Make sure you give a logical name, if they are decoration line, don’t name them ‘picture 1’, as that can be anything.
Keep the name simple too, it will help when replacing the decoration in new albums.

Some nice, free PNG-images I found here : https://www.pngegg.com/nl/

Add several to your newly created folder.
Look for decoration lines or small topic-related images.