Aligning Multiple Objects in the Canvas

You could spend a lot of time trying to align the four objects in a row, with equal space between the objectsor you could have Motion take care of the alignment for you. That's right: You can choose from the Objects menu the way you want to align selected objects, and Motion will fix the alignment for you automatically. All you have to do is select all of the objects that you want to align.

The Objects menu provides 12 alignment choices, allowing you to automatically align edges, align centers, distribute edges, or distribute centers. For this exercise, you'll align the top edges of the objects and then distribute the left edges.

First, let's look at the duplicate objects on the Layers tab.

1.	Press Cmd-4 to open the Layers tab. There are now four Sunset objects on the Photographs layer: the original Sunset object and the three copies. Selecting an object on the Layers tab also selects that object in the Canvas. A shortcut for selecting a group of contiguous objects on the Layers tab is to select the first object in a list and then Shift-click the last object. Let's Shift-click to select all four Sunset objects on the Layers tab.
2.	Select the Sunset object on the Layers tab.
3.	Shift-click the Sunset copy 2 object. All four Sunset objects are selected both on the Layers tab and in the Canvas.
4.	Choose Object > Alignment > Align Top Edges.
5.	Choose Object > Alignment > Distribute Lefts. Your objects are now perfectly aligned and spaced across the top of the frame.