Line & Fill Palette

The Line & Fill Palette is the starting place for working with color in MandalaMaker 2. It allows you to set the colors that MandalaMaker draws with.

The palette has three panels that allow you to set their respective attributes:

• The Line Panel sets the outline (also known as the stroke) that MandalaMaker draws around your shapes
• The Fill Panel sets the color or gradient that fills the inside of your shapes
• The Back Panel sets the color or gradient in the area behind and around your shapes (the Background).

The Line & Fill Palette is new to MandalaMaker 2, replacing the Color Palette. The new Palette functions in many ways like the old one, but has an all new look along with some changes in functionality.

Most prominent among the changes is the lack if a visible color palette with swatches to choose from. Rest assured that the palette is still available — it's just a click away.

Setting the Line Width

The Width Pop-up allows you to set the width of the Line drawn around your shapes. Placing the cursor over the pop-up and clicking opens a menu as shown in the illustration on the right. Number choices from 0.5 to 8.5 represent the thickness of the line in pixels. When you make a change in the Width Pop-up, it is reflected immediately in the selected shape on the Canvas.

Setting the Paint

The Paint Swatches indicate the current Paint being used for each painted component. The Paint may be a solid color, with or without transparency, or a gradient (to learn more about Paints, see the section Working with Paints).

To change a current Paint, click on the Paint Swatch to reveal a pop-up menu as shown below. Depending on the current Paint settings, all or some of the following options will be available on the Pop-up:

• Set Color - opens the Paint Palette to select a solid color
• New Color - opens one of the Color Pickers to create a new solid color or modify the currently set color.
• Set Gradient - opens the Paint Palette to select a pre-defined gradient.
• New Gradient - opens the Gradient Palette to create a new gradient or modify the currently set gradient.
• Set Transparency - opens the Transparency Palette to set the transparency of the current color.
• Clear Paint - removes all color so nothing is drawn.

Setting Transparency

There are a few things to be aware of regarding how MandalaMaker works with transparency:

• Predefined Palette colors and gradients are all completely opaque.
  
  
• To add transparency to an opaque color, use the Transparency Palette.
  
  
• To add transparency to a gradient, open the Gradient Palette by choosing New Gradient from the Paint Swatch's Popup Menu.
  
  
• Each of the two colors of a gradient has its own transparency and each must be set separately by clicking on their respective swatches in the Gradient Palette.
  
  
• Clearing the color of the Back will make the background transparent. In this situation, the Canvas will display a gray and white checkerboard background to indicate the transparency.
  
  
• A transparent background is only useful if you plan on Exporting your mandala as a PNG or GIF image.

See the sections on the Paint Palette, Transparency Palette, Color Pickers and the Gradient Palette for details on working with these.

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