lunacy-docs/docs/tips.md

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Lunacy has a lot of small but very useful features that can ease your life or significantly speed up your workflow. This chapter is a collection of tips with short demos that will help you take full advantage of Lunacy.

Hiding UI elements

• To hide the left panel, click the respective button at the bottom of the toolbar or use the View menu.
• To hide the toolbar, Inspector, rulers and other UI elements, use the View menu.
• To hide all UI elements at once (except for the menu bar), use the Ctrl+. shortcut or a respective command on the View menu.

Changing the position and disabling the suggestions panel

To change the position of the suggestions panel, click the handle at the top-left corner of the panel and drag it up or down. Lunacy remembers the position of the panel individually for each object.

To disable the suggestions panel, unselect the Suggestions option in the View menu.

Text formatting

When editing typography settings you don't need to select a word or the whole text to make it bold, italicized or whatever. Just set the caret inside a word or at the end of the text and apply the required setting. In the latter case, the setting will be applied to the whole text.

Copying and pasting styling properties

The demo below shows how you can copy and paste styling properties between objects.

Adjusting values in the Inspector

There are several ways to change values in the numeric fields of the Inspector. You can:

• Enter the new value manually (press Enter to submit).
• Click over the required field and rotate the mouse wheel to gradually increase or decrease the value.
• Hover the cursor over the required field, wait a moment until the cursor turns into a double-headed arrow and then drag the cursor up or down.
• Use math (press Enter to submit).

Drawing/resizing shapes from the center

Press and hold Alt to draw/resize a shape from the center or Alt+Shift if you want to get a regular shape or preserve aspect ratio during resizing. See the red circle in the demo below.

Transforming shapes through the Inspector

The next demo shows how you can modify shapes by adjusting their properties in the Inspector.

Adjusting the corner radius setting for rectangles

Note: The method shown in the next demo works only with rectangles drawn with the shape tool.

Resizing objects using keyboard

To resize objects, you can use the shortcuts CTRL+ arrow keys (by 1 pixel) or CTRL+Shift + arrow keys ( by 10 pixels) to resize objects.

Text generation

If you need to add a random text to your design, simply expand a text block on the canvas and click the “Generate text” button on the Inspector or select the text type in the top Lunacy panel. Use Shift+R to refresh the generated text.

Text snippets

You don't need to think of user names, addresses and stuff of that kind for your designs. Just type the required text snippet and press Enter. Use Shift+R to refresh the generated text.

Converting text to vector shapes

Lunacy enables you to convert text layers into vector shapes.

Alternatively, you can use the Ctrl+Shift+O shortcut.

Note: Remember that the text-to-vector operation is demanding in terms of system resources. Attempts to convert large portions of text can seriously slow Lunacy down .

Disabling snapping

To disable snapping, hold down Ctrl while dragging an object.

Eyedropper zoom

Lunacy's eyedropper features a nice zoom option that comes in handy when the target area is small and you need pixel precision. To enable zoom, hover the eyedropper over the target and hold down the left mouse button. Then point the eyedropper to the required pixel and release the mouse button. To exit the zoom mode, press Esc or quickly swipe the cursor anywhere away from the current area.

Scaling objects

If you want to resize an object with styling (borders, shadows, etc.), you should consider the scaling feature. Together with object size, it will accordingly adjust the values of its styling properties. See the demo below and note how the value of the border thickness changes with the object size.

In a similar fashion you can scale several objects at a time.

Background removal

If you need to remove background from an image, you can do it right in Lunacy.

Importing an image from the internet

To quickly import an image from a web site to Lunacy, right-click over the image, then click Copy image on the context menu. Switch to Lunacy and paste the image onto the canvas.