Using and Setting Up Graphics and Colors

While many of the following settings are of use in Draw particularly, they affect any document containing graphics or colors.

Inserting Graphics and Objects in OpenOffice.org Documents

You can insert any raster file, such as a GIF or JPG, into a document. You can also insert any standard file, a new spreadsheet, a plug-in, and more. For more detail, refer to Chapter 8, Adding Objects and Links to Documents , on page 271.

1. Click the location in the document where you want to insert the picture.

2. Click on the Insert or Insert Object icon on the main toolbar (shown above). The selections vary by application. You can also choose Insert > Graphics or Insert > Object. Then just make the appropriate selection for what you want to insert.

Viewing Images and Sounds in the Gallery

With a full installation, the program includes a library (called the Gallery) of stock art, sounds, and animated GIF files. The Gallery is composed of links to source files.

1. Choose Tools > Gallery. If you can't see it, click the arrow shown at the far left of Figure 5-21 and the gallery should appear.

   Figure 5-21. Viewing the gallery

   

2. The Gallery appears, with the categories (themes) on the left side, as shown in Figure 5-21.

3. Select the right theme, then drag a graphic into your document.

Adding Gallery Items to Your Own Themes and Creating Themes

You can add your own pictures, sounds, and animations to themes you've created, and you can mix all types of files, such as pictures, sounds, and animated GIFs, in a single theme. You can't rearrange items by dragging them between galleries, and you can't add items to existing themes.

This procedure covers how to create or open your own theme, and add items to it.

1. Display the Gallery by choosing Tools > Gallery. If the Gallery is already checkmarked, look for the small arrow at the left side of the work area and click it (see Figure 5-21).

2. Create or open a theme.

   • If you need to create a new theme, click the New Theme button.

   • If you've got an existing theme to add items to, select it in the left side of the Gallery and right-click it, then select Properties.

   The window for creating themes and adding items to existing themes, is shown in Figure 5-22. It's called Properties of New Theme or Properties of theme_name .

   Figure 5-22. Theme and items window

   

3. Click the Files tab. Select the type of files you'll be looking for, or just leave the selection as All. The window is shown in Figure 5-23.

   Figure 5-23. Specifying file type to look for

   

4. Click the Find Files button and navigate to the directory containing the files (Figure 5-24), then click OK. You can only get to the directory in this step; you'll select the files in the next step.

   Figure 5-24. Navigate to the directory where the files are

   

5. The graphics in that directory will appear (Figure 5-25); if you specified a particular file type, only files of that type will be listed. To see thumbnails of the files, select Preview, then select any file to view it.

   Figure 5-25. Previewing files from the directory you selected

   

6. To add a file, select it and click Add. To add them all, click Add All. The files will be added by reference, not copied , to the Gallery.

7. Click OK to save changes and close the window. You can select the new theme now in the Gallery and see the file or files you added.

Setting 3D Display Options

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > View.

Figure 5-26. Specifying 3D graphics options

Note

Be sure to check the graphics printing options in Specifying Print Settings for Bitmaps, Transparency, and Color /Grayscale on page 87. These affect how transparent graphics and gradients are managed during printing, among other things.

Managing the Amount of Memory Used on Graphics and Inserted Objects

Note

Be sure to check the graphics printing options in Specifying Print Settings for Bitmaps, Transparency, and Color/Grayscale on page 87. These affect how transparent graphics and gradients are managed during printing, among other things.

Ever have your machine slow to a crawl with really big graphics in a document? You can limit the amount of memory that OpenOffice.org will allocate to caching graphics. Once you go over this limit, it dumps the graphics from memory when you don't need it and loads the whole graphic again when you display it again. If you're happy now, don't mess with this; if you've having problems, change the settings and see what suits you.

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Memory and look at the Graphics Cache section.

Note

The Remove From Memory setting doesn't really affect the document containing the graphics but will affect objects, graphics and other non-text information not currently displayed on the screen. The default is listed as 00:10, 0 hours and 10 minutes. Adjust so it's comfortable.

Figure 5-27. Graphics cache settings

Changing the Default Color for New Objects or Creating a New Color

Blue7 is an attractive color, but if you more often want to create a rectangle or page background in another color, select something else. Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Colors and select a different color.

If you have a specific color, just generally or a specific RGB or CMYK combination that you'd like available in all applications, you can create that too.

1. Select RGB or CMYK.

2. Specify the color:

   • Enter the right numbers in the color fields

   • Click Edit to see the full spectrum of possibilities.and click on the color you want, as shown in Figure 5-28, and click OK.

     Figure 5-28. Selecting a new color in the Color window

     

   • In the main color options window, type a new name in the Name field and click Add. The new color and name will appear as shown in Figure 5-29.

     Figure 5-29. Selecting a new color in the Color window

     

The new color will show up in other applications in color dropdown lists.