Views on Vistaprint Pt. 3 - Centring Text in the Card and Saving Your Designs as Bitmaps

Continuing our series of articles on getting the most out of the VistaPrint card design tool, this time we'll be discussing how to centre text and image objects in the card and also how to save your card designs as a bitmap.

Centring Text Objects in the Card

Nb. In common with the previous article on how to standardise object widths, this technique can be used by either aligning the borders of the sizing boxes or the borders of the object itself. In this example, the contents of the text box only just fits in to the printable area of the card, so we will use the borders of the object.

We'll start with an uncentred text object, with the text split across three lines. First align the right hand borders of the object with the right hand border of the printable area of the card.

Then use the left hand sizing box of the object to align the left hand border of the object with the left hand border of the card's printable area. Ensure that the text  in the object is centre-aligned by using the Align Centre button.

You will note that the text box uses the minimum number of lines to display its contents. In order to display the text on three lines, as it was before, you need to alter the contents of the text box itself. First, make sure that the text contents control, located at the left of the screen, highlighted in blue, matches the contents of the required text box. If it doesn't, click on the text box. Then click on the highlighted text contents control. Move the cursor to the beginning of every word where you want to split the line, in turn, and press 'Return'. Your text should now be split as desired but still centred in the card.

Saving Your Card Designs as Bitmaps

The VistaPrint card design utility allows you to preserve your layouts for several months while you are offline, without deleting them,  but not indefinitely. It is a good idea, therefore, to have a copy of your card designs saved on you computer, for safekeeping. It can also be useful to have copies of your designs to show to others, without printing them, as well as for other purposes. Documents like the ones in this series, for example. We will now see how to save your card layouts as bitmaps on your own computer. Nb. This technique only works for Windows. If you use a different operating system, the method for saving the contents of the screen as a bitmap will be different and you may have to use an extra piece of software for that purpose.

We will start with a finished card layout, inside the browser. Make sure that all the contents you want to preserve are all displayed in the browser window and the browser window is active. To make sure of this, click on the title bar of the browser window. 
Next, hold down the 'Alt' key. This should be located at the bottom of the keyboard, to the left of the space bar. Then, while keeping the 'Alt' key held down, press 'PrtSc' or 'Print Screen'. You should find this key near the top right of the keyboard. It may have another command also written on the key, for example, 'SysReq'. You don't have to worry about this. The purpose of these keypresses is to copy the content of the browser window to the clipboard. If you don't know what this means, don't worry about it, just trust me!

You will now need to open up a copy of Microsoft Paint, or your favourite graphics editing program. Then paste the contents of the clipboard into the program. This can be done in Paint by selecting 'Paste' then, under that, 'Paste' again, or by pressing 'Ctrl V'.

By clicking and holding down the left mouse button on the image of the browser contents, you can move it towards the top left hand corner of the Paint window, so as to cut off anything above or to the left of your card layout. 

Then, use the scroll bars of the Paint window to bring the bottom right hand corner of the image into view. This should now have broad, white borders below and to the right of the image of the browser, as you have moved the top left part of the image out of the Paint window. Click inside the Paint window, inside the blank white area, near the bottom right of the window. This should de-select the browser image. It will also move the sizing boxes from the bottom right hand of the browser image to the bottom right hand corner of the main image. 

Now use the bottom right sizing box to eliminate the bottom right hand parts of the card image that you don't need. You can now save the image of your card design as a bitmap.

Next time, how to use an image as a watermark for your business card.


[Edit 30/03/2013]
You can now download the Centring Text Objects in the Card article as a printable PDF file.