Discover how to create dynamic visual layouts by incorporating text and images while also learning how to add effective finishing touches like drop shadows. The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to import and resize images, align text, and modify design elements to enhance visual appeal.
Key Insights
- The article details a methodical approach to importing images into a design project, allowing full control over their sizing, positioning, and interaction with other page elements.
- Text alignment and positioning play a crucial role in associating words with images, creating a visually compelling narrative that guides the viewer through the content.
- Finishing touches such as adding a drop shadow to images can drastically enhance the visual depth and dynamism of a layout, influencing the viewer's perception and interaction with the content.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we're going to begin working on page 6. So hitting W on our keyboard, let's now evaluate page 6. For this page we need to have two separate images as well as two to three sentences about each image. So let’s begin by first importing our images.
We’ll go to import file and from here we’ll get to add any of our living space feature images. In this case I’m going to start by utilizing this one, however feel free to pick whichever image you'd like to work with first. And again we’ll fit it and resize it as appropriate.
In this case I want to feature a bit more of the sofa and the tables. And for this bottom image now, let’s go to import file again and feel free to choose a second image. I’m going to choose feature 2 and click open.
And again we’ll fit it. Again I’m going to feature a little more of the couch and chair. And with these two images here we’re now ready to begin working on our text.
For this text we only need to have two to three sentences. So let’s simply delete the additional text here using the backspace. And I’ll delete two paragraphs from here.
And I think this will be about two to three sentences. Next, to give this a little more dynamic feel where the text is right next to the image, let’s create this bottom text where it’s aligned in a way that it’s on the bottom right-hand side. We’ll first start by right-aligning it, which gives it more of a characteristic of being attached to this image, whereas the left-aligned text is more attached to this image.
We’ll then also align this on the bottom. So going to our alignment options, we’ll select align bottom from our control bar. If we hit W on the keyboard now, we can see a preview of this and it’s starting to show that these words are associated with this image.
We’ll hit W again. I feel like this now still needs to be a little more dynamic, so let’s add a drop shadow. To do this we’ll add it first to our top image.
And let’s actually make our top image on top of the other image by using control shift close brackets to bring it to the top of our layer. And now we’re going to right-click and to add a drop shadow, we’ll go down to effects and drop shadow. As we can see, there are many other effects that we can add.
However, in this case, we’ll be working with the drop shadow. If we make sure that our preview is checked, we can see an example of this drop shadow. And by modifying our distance here or the angle, we can change how the drop shadow is shown.
In this case, I’ll leave it at 135. And our X offset and Y offset show how far it is from the center. I’ll leave it at 0.125 and 0.1875. And I’ll click OK.
Now, we’ll also add a drop shadow to this image. Right clicking and adding effects and drop shadow. We’ll again go to X offset and Y offset and make our changes and click OK.
Once we have this drop shadow as part of our effect, if we want to modify it, we can come right here to appearance and make changes here. In this case, to have our drop shadow here, we can simply uncheck it to remove the drop shadow. For now, we’ll keep it on and click OK.
And hitting W on the keyboard, let’s see how this now looks. I think it looks good except that it’s now a little close to the page number. So utilizing our selection tool, we’ll hold shift and select both the text and the image.
And I’m simply going to move it up just a bit using the arrow key on the keyboard. From here, I’ll hit W again. And I think the bottom of the drop shadow now lines up well with the margin.
If we’d like, we can also select it and move it over to the left-hand side so that again the shadow lines up with the margin. From here, we now need to modify our text frame so that it’s lined up with the right side of our image. Next, we need to work on text wrapping.
We’ll start with our bottom image first and selecting it. Let’s go to text wrap and we’ll do wrap around bounding box. From here, we can increase on any of the sides since it’s unlinked.
However, the side that we really need to increase it on is our left side. So let’s move it over 0.125 inches. And again, hitting W, we’ll always want to double check and see what this looks like.
In this case, I’ll also add a period to the end of this text. And I think this looks good for the bottom here. As one final change, I’ll hit CTRL A to select all the text.
And let’s just change it from light to bold italic. And this will provide a little different dynamic view. We can also click it and remove our hyphenate as I feel like it’s a little distracting.
Now, moving to the top text, we’ll then hit V on the keyboard and select our image frame and go into text wrap. We’re going to just push it to the right, right at 0.25 inches. I think this gives us enough space.
I think this now looks good. Let’s hit CTRL S on the keyboard now to save our work. And in the next video, we’re going to begin working on page 7. See you there.