PRINTMASTER PLUS Typed in by ???. Edited by PARASITE. PRINTMASTER PLUS PrintMaster Plus is a versatile graphics program that lets you use your computer and printer to design and print personalized greeting cards, posters, stationary, calendars, and banners. You do not have to know how to program a computer or even draw to use PrintMaster Plus creatively. Just make selections from the border, graphics, layout, and font menus, enter your message, and print. With PrintMaster Plus can you make personalized invitations, flyers birthday banners, holiday cards, vacation schedules, bulletins, or newsletters mastheads. You will think of many ways to use PrintMaster at home, school or work. With 122 pre-designed graphics and patterns, 10 type fonts and 11 borders to choose from plus a graphic editor, the creative possibilities are endless. Also available for use with PrintMaster Plus is the Art Gallery series of additional graphics, which can be loaded into your designs directly. For more information see your dealer. Finally remember to send in your Print Master Plus registration card so we can send you update information. THE USER'S GUIDE Because the PrintMaster Plus program, with its easy-to-use system of menus, operates in the same way throughout, the User's Guide will not demonstrate every procedure in detail. You will learn how to set up and load PrintMaster Plus, be taken through the steps of designing and printing your first sign, and learn the various functions of the program. The User's Guide also provides design tips and samples of PrintMaster Plus graphics. This guide covers many versions of PrintMaster Plus, so some screen images and instructions may not match your exactly. To get started, turn too: - SETTING UP, for instructions on loading PrintMaster Plus; QUICKSTART, to make your first PrintMaster Plus design. WHAT YOU NEED -Commodore Amiga (oh alright...you can use yer ST!) -Disk Drive -Monitor -Printer supported by your version of PrintMaster Plus LOADING PRINTMASTER PLUS *Double click PrintMaster Plus disk icon, then double click PrintMaster Plus program icon CONFIGURING PRINTMASTER PLUS On most versions of PrintMaster Plus, the first time it is loaded you are asked which drive is your data drive (for saving customized graphics made with the Graphic Editor and designs for cards, etc.). Type: B, unless you have a single disk drive (type: A) or hard disk (type: C) (See section on Using a Hard Disk. MS-DOS Note: You will also be asked whether you have a graphics card. If you have an IBM Color Graphics Card (or compatible) or a Hercules Graphics Card (or compatible), answer YES. You can go back to change your answer to these questions by typing CONFIG at the A>prompt. You may change your data drive at any time by selecting HARDWARE CONFIG on the Project Choice Menu. AMIGA Note: Users can reconfigure PrintMaster Plus by selecting "Set Up" from the Project Choices Menu. PRINTER SETUP The screen instructs you to select a printer for use with PrintMaster Plus. From the Project Choices Menu, use the arrow keys to move the cursor bar to hardware config and press RETURN. If your printer is supported but not named, select a driver for a compatible printer Now, with your printer on line, select Test Printer to see what EOL character (short for End of Line character) your printer needs. If the test image is printed on one line, you need to select CR with LF (carriage return with line feed); if the image skips every other line, you need to select CR only (carriage return only). A printed message may tell you this instead. (You may need to select EOL Character first and then indicate the desired selection.) To begin using PrintMaster Plus, select All Done! OVERVIEW OF PRINTMASTER PLUS Designing with PrintMaster Plus is easy because the program is menu- driven; that is, your available choices appear in lists or menus on the screen. Also, the same menus are used in almost all program features. All you do is move the cursor to the selection you want and press RETURN. The only time you type is to enter a message, to select a date or enhance a calendar,or to name a saved graphic or design. These are the basics of using PrintMaster Plus: *Use the arrow keys to move the cursor to select the option you want. *Press RETURN (or equivalent) to confirm your selection. *Press ESC to return to a previous menu. MAKING A POSTER 1 - Select Poster from the Project Choice Menu. 2 - Project Options: Select New Poster 3 - What Next? Choose Border, then choose This disk, Browse through the list of borders and select one you like. 4 - What Next? Select Graphic, then choose This disk. 5 - First Graphic-Page 1: Browse through the list and select one you like. You can move both up and down and left and right in the list. 6 - Image Size: Move through the three choice to see their relative sizes. For this poster, select Regular Size. 7 - Image Layout: Select Freehand. 8 - Place or remove graphics in the boxes by pressing RETURN. For this poster, place them in the four corners; then press Q for All Done! 9 - What Next? Choose Text, then Choose This disk. Browse through the fonts and select one you like. 10 - Enter text: For this poster, move the cursor to the third or fourth row and type a short message two or three lines in length. When finished, press F1 (Function Key 1) or type CTRL-Q. 11 - What Next? Now select Preview/Print. Select Preview/Print again to preview the poster before printing. 12 - If you have screen graphics, a preview appears. To print, press RETURN, and in minutes you'll have your first PrintMaster Plus creation. Now select Project Choices to start a new design. When making cards, posters, calendars, stationary, or banners, you choose from among the same basic set of PrintMaster Plus options and functions, including the choice to design your own or use an existing design, borders, graphics graphic sizing and layout, fonts, and text editing and formatting options. You have already been introduced to these building blocks in the QUICK START section; now you will learn them in greater detail. The first thing you must do after you have chosen one of the five PrintMaster design features is to select a Project Option for card, poster, etc. Select New for new designs or Edit to load designs that you have made and saved yourself, which you will learn to do later in the User's Guide. To see a list of available designs to print or revise, put a disk with saved designs on it in the assigned data disk drive and select EDIT. BORDERS In the Greeting Card and Poster options, you have the ability to select borders with which to frame your design. PrintMaster Plus comes with 11 borders and a no-border option. Try to select borders that work with the theme and look of your design. GRAPHICS Graphics are used in all of the creations you can make with PrintMaster, in a variety of sizes and layouts. The program has 111 predesigned graphics and 11 pattern graphics. Additional graphics are available from the Art Gallery series or your custom graphics galleries. You can also choose not to use a graphic. These are the available selections: *This Disk: This option looks at the PrintMaster Plus disk's graphics, as seen in the QUICK START. *Another Disk: Choose this option if you are using an Art Gallery disk or your own graphics made with the Graphic Editor. PrintMaster Plus tells you when to insert the graphics disk. *No Graphic: Sometimes a nice border and the right text are all you need to make a great design. If you decide you want a graphic, browse through the menu of choices until you find the right one. Each graphic appears as you highlight its name. GRAPHIC SIZES The PrintMaster Plus graphics can be produced in three sizes and laid out in your designs in a variety of arrangements, depending on what you are making. With greeting cards and posters, you can choose half-size, regular or double-size graphics; other design types don't allow a size choice for graphics. GRAPHIC LAYOUT Depending on the size of the graphic and the type of design you are making, you will have different options for placing graphics in your design. For posters and greeting cards, the options are: *Diagonal: This option fills the image with a step-and-repeat pattern of five regular size graphics or thirteen half-size graphics. *Background: This option fills the image area with a rectangular grid of 35 half-size graphics *Freehand: This options lets you put graphics in any of 15 locations for regular-size graphics, or 35 locations using half-size graphics. Move to a box and press RETURN to place or remove a graphic. For stationary, calendars, and banners, graphics are arranged on a line; stationary is on two line, top and bottom, with different graphics possible on each. FONTS PrintMaster Plus lets you choose from 10 complete fonts, or type styles. The Editor font is used for fine print in the stationary and calendar features. Fonts include upper and lower case characters, numbers and punctuation, which can be used in all PrintMaster Plus creations. The PrintMaster Plus fonts can be used in a wide variety of ways in your designs. With greeting cards and posters you can use several lines of type, each with a different font, if you like. In many of the design options you can alter the alignment, appearance, or size of the fonts. TEXT EDITOR The Text Editor is where you enter and format text for your PrintMaster Plus designs, the last step before previewing and printing the design. The number of lines available for a given project and the number of characters per line will vary depending on the font and size used. It is very easy to edit and format in the Text Editor. The up arrow moves you up; RETURN or the down arrow moves you down. When done, press the F1 function key. Use the backspace key or space bar to fine tune your starting position within a line. To edit text, use the following function keys: *Quit: F1 lets you exit from text editing *Texture: F2 selects the Texture of the Text: Standard, Silhouette, Shadow, Rain, Checker *Change Size: F3 changes of the font size. *Change Font: F4 changes the font of the current line. *Erase: F5 erases a line of text. *Insert Line: F6 inserts a blank line. *Alignment: F7 aligns a line of text right, left or center. *Delete Line: F8 deletes a line of text. PRINTING A DESIGN After leaving the Text Editor, you come to another menu with various options presented. Here, depending on the version of PrintMaster Plus that you have, you can preview your design; print it normally, in reverse (for T-shirt transfer), or in multiple copies; save for design onto a data disk; go back to Hardware Config; or go to the Project Choice Menu. Select Preview/Print to go on. When the preview/print menu is in view, select preview/print again to see a preview, select print to actually print, or go back to change your design, as you wish. When printing, make sure that your printer is on line and that the paper is properly aligned. Some suggestions for enhancing your printing can be found in the DESIGN TIPS section. SAVING A DESIGN If you want to use your design over again, to print or to edit later, insert a blank formatted disk into the data drive and select SAVE DESIGN. When prompted, type a name for your design and press RETURN. Your design is then saved and ready for printing. To print a project at a later time, select the project you want to work on (Card, Poster, etc.), then the EDIT option from the menu for that Print Master Plus design, such as EDIT CARD, EDIT POSTER, etc. You will be prompted to put in the data disk on which your project was saved. This section illustrates and takes a closer look at the various kinds of creations that you can make with PrintMaster Plus; greeting cards, posters, stationary, calendars and banners. For suggestions on how to make these features work best for you, refer to the section on DESIGN TIPS. GREETING CARDS The Greeting Card is one of PrintMaster Plus' more versatile features. You can make: *Party invitations *Recital or play programs *Announcements *Holiday cards With the Greeting Card you are working with two separate designs, one for the outside and one for the inside of the card. You can use borders, graphics in a choice of three sizes and various layouts, and fonts in several styles and arrangements. When the card has been printed, fold it in quarters. Fold along Fold A (center) first to make the spine on the left edge of the card; fold along Fold B (right edge) first to make the spine on the top of the card. POSTERS The Poster feature is also extremely useful. With it you can make: *School bulletins *Flyers for a garage sale *News flashes for the Office *Reminder notes You learned to make a poster very quickly and easily in the Quick Start section. Feel free to experiment with more of the border, graphics, and font options of this feature in your version of PrintMaster Plus. STATIONARY PrintMaster Plus Stationary can be a very useful, attractive or humorous enhancement to your letter and memo writing. You can either feed your creations back into the printer for printing letters or other computer files or photocopy it for other applications. Use it to make: *Personal letterhead *Business letterhead *Memo or note paper *Newsletter masthead Stationary uses no boarders, and the graphics and text are printed only along the top and bottom of the page. You can use a different graphic on top and bottom. PrintMaster Plus allow a total of four different graphics. On both the top and the bottom you can use one line of the regular fonts, in one size only, and one to three lines in the Editor font for headings and more detailed text, respectively. CALENDARS PrintMaster Plus' Calendar feature offers you personalized monthly or weekly calendars. Among many other things, you can make: *Vacation schedules *Exam schedules *Holiday party datebooks *Appointment calendars In terms of design, the Calendar feature of PrintMaster Plus is similar to stationary and banners, but you will emphasize content more than design, using the feature's ability to add text to the calendar dates. MONTHLY CALENDAR: If you want to make a monthly calendar, you then enter the month and year. Choose them either with a menu or by typing. PrintMaster Plus will accept any year between 1900 and 2099. Next, select either one or two graphics for the top of the calendar. Now choose a font (one size only) for the heading. By default, the program will print the month and year as the heading, or you can select Text to specify another title. You can also choose to Add Text, which lets you add messages for the dates. The number of days you can add text to depends upon which computer you have. The space for letters is very small: about lines of 3 to 6 characters per date. WEEKLY CALENDAR There are two basic types of weekly calendar; generic and specific. The generic calendar prints little boxes so you can write in the dates yourself; the specific calendar prints actual dates. Choose the month and year, then select the graphics and fonts just as you would in the monthly calendar. You can also alter the heading and enhance the dates. The weekly calendar allows more room for these messages. MS-DOS NOTE: You cannot enhance the dates of the generic calendar on this version. BANNERS The Banner feature is perhaps PrintMaster Plus' easiest feature to use. There is nothing like a dynamic banner to get people's attention. Use the Banner feature to make: *Birthday banners *Cheerleading posters *Lemonade stand poster *Bon voyage banners When making a banner, simply select a graphic; the graphic layout options found in the Stationary feature may be available. Now select a font, type your message and print. Banner text is only as long as poster text. You can make longer banners by making them in pieces and taping them together. Since PrintMaster Plus lets you print graphics on one side only, you can make a longer banner by printing two in succession; the first with a graphic on the left, the second with a graphic on the right. USING THE DRAWING PAD The Drawing Pad lets you create your own graphics, either from scratch or by altering any of the PrintMaster Plus or Art Gallery graphics. You can only use the Drawing Pad if you have graphics capabilities that are supported by PrintMaster Plus. CP/M NOTE: PrintMaster Plus does not display graphics, so enter the Drawing Pad via the Project Choice Menu. In the Drawing Pad you can draw and erase, invert and flip your picture or parts of it, and much more. First you must decide whether to edit an existing graphic or start with a blank screen by choosing the option L for LOAD. *This disk: Lets you select an existing picture to edit from the PrintMaster Plus disk *Another disk: This selection lets you choose an existing picture to edit from a data disk, whether one in our own Art Gallery series or one of your own pictures saved onto a data disk. *No Graphic: This choice puts you into the Drawing Pad with a blank work space. To learn to use the Drawing Pad, try loading a graphic from the PrintMaster disk to edit. Upon entering, note that you move around the same as the rest of the program; with the arrow keys, joystick, or mouse, as your system allows. Keystroke based commands are displayed below the drawing pad or on a separate screen. Here are some other ways you can alter pictures: Invert Graphic swaps black and white in the shape. With Flip Horizontal or Vertical graphic symmetry can be easily achieved. Some versions have the Window feature, which lets you move and manipulate parts of your graphic in rectangular windows. Clear Graphics lets you start over with a blank screen; Load Graphics lets you load a new image for editing. Printing and saving your work is also easily accomplished. Use ESC to quit the Drawing Pad and go back to Project Options. In order to help you get the most out of using PrintMaster Plus, we offer this section of tips on designing, printing, and reproducing your PrintMaster creations: *Avoid cluttering your signs or cards. Decide whether graphics or text is most important, and emphasize that. *Avoid overlapping heavy graphics and text. Use the Outline option in fonts in order to make fonts readable over dark backgrounds. Use the Background layout with the pattern graphics or edit your own light-toned graphics for use with text. *Use the preview feature to help you fine tune the positioning of text and graphics in your designs. *Use different sizes of text when possible for punch and content. *For harmonious use of text, use variations of one font or fonts that are visually compatible. To attract attention, use all capitals, but for best readability, use upper and lower case. For the De Ville and Scribe fonts, we recommend not using all capitals. *For greeting cards, consider emphasizing graphics on the cover to attract attention, text on the inside to emphasize the content. *Stationary will probably serve its purpose best if you emphasize your name or other title on either the top or the bottom, but not both. *You can get longer messages onto your designs by using smaller fonts and thinner borders. When printing, align your paper so that the top edge is just above the print head. Use fresh ribbons for final printouts, old ones for drafts. DESIGN TIPS There are several ways to extend the graphic possibilities of PrintMaster Plus. You can print partial designs and run them back through the printer to get more graphics into your designs. If you switch between various colored ribbons, you can achieve some very nice color effects. Printing onto colored paper also adds another dimension to your work with PrintMaster Plus. In addition, the mirror or reverse printing option allows you to make T-shirt transfers. Colored ribbons, printer paper and T-shirt transfers are available at some computer stores, through mail order catalogs and computer magazines. A source for many of these items is found in the Appendix. Many new photocopying machines provide high contrast copying allowing you to cleanly reproduce materials assembled wit cut and paste techniques. Many machines offer reduction and enlargement capabilities or color copying, extending your design possibilities even further. All these options simply make your PrintMaster Plus designs even more original. So experiment, and by all means have fun. APPENDIX - USING A HARD DISK If you have a hard disk for your computer you can set it up quite easily to run PrintMaster Plus. The procedures for doing this is as follows: *Make a directory on your hard disk for the PrintMaster Plus files. *Copy all files on the PrintMaster Plus disk into that directory. *Now, to use PrintMaster Plus, enter the directory and type: PM. *You can create a small batch file to enter and exit the directory before and after using the program so that you will have less typing to do. If you are using an Art Gallery with the PrintMaster Plus program, consult the Art Gallery manual for instructions on using these products with your hard disk.