Present: design a slide of your own

A design slide is one you lay out yourself: words, pictures and shapes where you put them. In a part of the slides that isn't a song or Scripture, press Design a slide. The designer opens full screen on its layouts.

Start from a layout

The layouts come in your church's fonts and colors: a title, a title and a line, a picture and words, a full picture with a caption, three points, an event, and a QR code and a line. Choose one and change it. Press Layouts to see them again; one put over what's on the slide asks first.

Add and move things

1. From the bar, add Words, a Picture, a Video, a Shape, a QR code, a Clock or a Countdown. A picture's chooser has Make one, to make a picture with AI.
2. Drag it where you want it. Pull a corner to make it bigger or smaller, and the round handle above it to turn it. Lines show when it lines up with the middle of the slide, its edges or another thing, with the distance in between.
3. Double-click words to type in them where they are, or type them in the settings beside the slide (below it on an iPad held upright).
4. On an iPad, tap something to choose it, then drag it.

The settings change whatever you've chosen: its font and size, its color, how see-through it is. A number you type takes effect when you press Enter or move to the next box. A picture can be cropped with Crop, rounded, or made A circle. Words can Shrink to fit the box.

Shapes and lines

Shape adds the shape you used last; the ▾ beside it opens the whole library: rectangle, rounded, circle, oval, triangle, diamond, star, hexagon, pentagon, arrow, line, arrow line, curve, speech bubble, cross, sparkle, pie, and Draw a line. Click one to drop it in the middle of the slide, or drag it where it goes. In the settings, a star has Points (3 to 24) and Point length, from short and chunky to long and sharp, with five small stars to pick from; or drag the small handle inside the star on the slide. Triangle, pentagon and hexagon are one polygon with Sides (3 to 12); a pie has its Sweep; most take Rounded tips. A shape's fill can be A gradient, to a second color, at an angle.

A line goes from one end of its box to the other: drag either end, give it a Weight, Dashes, and an arrow, a dot or a bar at its Start or End, or make it A curve, with a handle in the middle to bend it. Draw a line in the library lets you drag one straight onto the slide.

Effects

Under Effects, anything on the slide can Blend with what's behind (Darken, Lighten, Stronger or Softer, in a plain-words menu), take a Shadow (None, Soft, Strong, or Custom with its distance, angle, softness, strength and color), and an Outline with a width and a color. Words that already had a shadow or an outline from their look show it here; a change writes the effect in its place. A blend shows on the room's screen and in the slide list; the pastor's screen draws every slide over black, so a Darken blend looks dark there.

More than one thing

Shift-click (or Shift-tap in the layers) to choose several. Then line them up, spread them evenly with Spread across, or Group them so they move together. Copy style and Paste style copy one thing's look onto another.

Layers sits above the settings, folded with a count ("Layers · 6 of 40"), six rows at a time with the chosen one brought into view. Each row has a handle to drag, its icon, its name, an eye to hide it and a lock to keep it where it is. Double-click a name to rename it (or type a name under Name in the layers in the settings); a group's rows sit under a group row that folds. Drag a layer up or down to change what's in front, or hold Alt with an arrow.

Keys

Ctrl+Z undoes and Ctrl+Shift+Z does it again, up to 100 steps. The arrows nudge what's chosen (Shift for 10 at a time); Delete removes it; Ctrl+D makes a copy; Ctrl+G groups; Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ bring what's chosen forward or send it back one step (with Shift, to the front or the back). Drag on an empty part of the slide to draw a box and choose everything it touches. Ctrl+S saves. On a Mac, use Command instead of Ctrl.

Save and show it

Press Save. The slide shows in the slides and on the room's screens as you laid it out. Livestream words shows its words only. Preview shows it as the room will. Safe area marks where every screen shows, so nothing important is cut off at the edges.

To lay out a slide you typed (a title and its lines) your own way, open it and press Design this slide: its words become things you can move. A design slide opens with Open the designer.

On a phone the designer changes the words only. Open it on a tablet or a computer to move things around.

The screen's shape

Most screens are 16:9. For an older 4:3 projector or an LED wall, open Look in the slides and choose under Screen shape. Every slide in the presentation, songs too, then draws in that shape. On a screen of another shape, like an ultra-wide or a square one, the slide sits in the middle with black around it, never squeezed or cut off.