## Libraries

The Libraries tab is divided into two sections. The expandable top section holds templates you can use to quickly layout panels on a page. It also holds an individual panel well for creating custom layouts. The lower section shows your iPhoto library (if you use iPhoto) on the iPhoto tab, your home folder on the Finder tab and a live video feed from your video camera (if one is available) on the Capture tab.

When ever you create a new page the Libraries tab is automatically revealed and the templates area expanded so you can quickly choose a new template or start laying out your pictures.

### Panels and Page Templates

Panels let you easily create comic layouts - they can smartly clip anything put inside them to their edges - images, balloons, etc - letting you focus on telling your story instead of fussing with tidying things up. We'll look at panels in another section.

#### Browsing templates

If the template browser is not already expanded expand it by clicking on the disclosure button.
The browser smoothly expands to show three rows of templates. If there are more rows you can easily scroll up and down row-by-row by clicking on the scrollbar arrows or by dragging the scroll bar. Or expand the area further by dragging the Library divider:

Comic Life comes with a few different template collections that are suited for different situations. You can view the different collections by selecting any of them from the popup menu.

#### Using a template

To use one of the templates you can drag and drop it onto a blank page or simply double-click it.

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If the current page is empty (has no elements of any kind on it) the panels from the template are added to the current page. Otherwise a new page is created directly after the current page and the panels are added to that. In either case the panels are automatically stretched to fit the dimensions of the page.

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If the template browser was not expanded by you it is automatically collapsed to provide more room for browsing your images. If it does not collapse you can force it to by clicking once more on the disclosure triangle. The template browser shrinks until just a single row is displayed.

### Photos

Comic Life provides three photo browsers - one for iPhoto, one for the files located in your home folder (or anywhere on your computer) and one for your video camera. All browsers provide similar functionality with some minor differences.

#### Adding a photo

When you have found a photo click on it and while holding down the mouse button drag it to the page.

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If you want the image to be added to a panel drag the image over the panel and release the mouse. The image is automatically added to the panel, resized to fill the available space in the panel and clipped to the edges.

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You can keep adding images until all the panels are filled.

#### iPhoto Browsing

The iPhoto Browser automatically displays all the images in your iPhoto Library. The thumbnails are gradually loaded and displayed. To switch to a different album select the album from the popup menu. The thumbnails for that album are loaded and displayed in the area below.

If you want to change the size of the thumbnails use the slider at the bottom of the tab. The resizing behavior operates in a similar manner to iPhoto - it changes the number of columns to maximize the use of the available space. At maximum size just one thumbnail per row is displayed. At minimum size five thumbnails per row are shown.

#### Finder Browsing

Comic Life has a smart Finder to help you locate images in your folders. Whenever a folder is opened all the files are checked and thumbnails are created and displayed for any images letting you find them visually rather than by using their typically obscure file names.

Any non-image files are shown with their normal icons. To open a folder simply double-click on the folder.

Note: While thumbnails are loading you can still navigate the file-system to other folders - so don't worry about waiting if you're not at the correct folder.

To pop up out of a folder you can use the arrow button beside the folder label. This takes you up one level in the folder hierarchy.

#### Video Capture

If you have a video camera connected to your computer you can grab images from it directly and drop them onto your comic. You can drag and drop from the live video feed:
Or you can click on the freeze button to take a traditional snap shot and then drag the frozen image. The video will remain frozen until you click on the freeze button again: