Working with Dynamic Guides

Did you notice the yellow lines that appeared as you dragged the Background file over the Canvas? Those lines are called Dynamic Guides, and you can use them to help align your objects in the Canvas.

To see the guides again, click the Background object in the Canvas and drag it up, down, right, or left. The yellow guides appear, showing you whether your object is aligned in the center of the frame or to another object.

1.	In the Canvas, drag the Background object (the light blue rectangle) and move it around the center of the frame until you see a both the horizontal and vertical yellow guides in the center. When the yellow lines appear as a cross in the center of your object, it is aligned in the center of the frame. Now let's add the Shapes object to the project using the Import button method.
2.	In the File Browser, select the Shapes object to load it into the Preview area. Notice that it looks like a white square on a black background. The black around the white square is an alpha channel (an area that appears invisible); you will not actually see the black portion of the Shapes file when you add it to the project. MORE INFO You will learn more about alpha channels in Lesson 5.
3.	At the lower right of the Preview area, click the Import button to import the file into the project.

The Shapes file is added to your project above the Background layer and is centered in the Canvas window automatically.

When you import a file using the Import button, the entire file is centered in the Canvas, so anything within that file will keep its original place. The Shapes file used in this exercise was designed in Photoshop with the white square placed exactly where it should be for the final Motion composite.

Excellent work. However, the layer is called Shapes, and there is only one shape. Either we should change the title or add a shape. We'll add a shape that we create ourselves. First, let's save our work. If you are using the trial version of the software, you won't be able to save your work because the save features are disabled.