Place Objects With Precision In Mac Apps

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to place objects in Mac Apps with precision. 

Now when working graphics, word processing, or design apps you often need to place objects at different places in the document. For instance, you may Drag & Drop an object on one side of the screen or the other. It's easy to place objects in the general area where you want. But if you need precision it can be tougher. There are a variety of techniques that let you place objects exactly where you want them. However, if you don't have a background in design or Desktop Publishing you may not know about these even though they have been around for decades. 

Now the techniques I'm talking about are not the snapping techniques that you probably are familiar with. Like for instance these objects can easily snap to center with each other, like this, or align the edges, like that. You can even in apps like Pages show Rulers, create guides, snap objects to guides, and all of that. But I'm not going to talk about that kind of placement. I'm going to talk about things that will work without setting anything up in advance. 

So, for instance, when you place an object like this one and you want to get, maybe, these two points to touch, like that, just as an example you may have a hard time trying to Drag & Drop to that exact location. What a lot of people don't realize is you can simply stop dragging and dropping and for precision use the keyboard. The Arrow keys on the keyboard will take what is selected in almost any app and move it one pixel at a time. So you can see how I can move it slightly and get it pretty much exactly where I want. 

Now another aspect of this is that it is pretty slow, right, to move one at a time. But in almost all cases, in all apps, if you hold the Shift key down and use the arrow keys it moves in larger increments. Usually ten pixels at a time. So, to the left one pixel at a time with the left arrow key, but Shift and left moves ten pixels at a time. 

This works the same in Keynote. If I select an object in Keynote the arrow keys move the object one pixel at a time. Shift and arrow keys move the object ten pixels at a time.  Here's Freeform. I select an object and I can use the arrow keys for one pixel. Shift arrow keys for ten pixels. Here's Preview. In Preview you usually just read documents. But you can turn on the Markup Tools and then create shapes and objects and text and things like that there. With an object selected I can use the arrow keys to move one pixel at a time and Shift with the arrow keys to move ten. 

Finally, here's an example of a third party app, although Pixelmator Pro is owned by Apple now. But you can select an object here and the same thing. You can move one pixel at a time with the arrow keys and Shift arrow keys moves in larger increments. Now you may already know that, and that's fine. But there's a lot of people that just never think of actually moving to the keyboard to move one pixel at a time like that. As you can see it is something that has been adapted by almost all apps, Apple's apps and third party apps. Anywhere you drag items around in a document you usually can use the arrow keys and Shift plus the arrow keys to move them around with precision.

Now here's another technique you'll find in almost all apps. You can use Alignment tools to move things around. So, for instance, if I wanted to get these to align with each other I've got this handy little snapping tool in Pages. But if you don't want to rely on that you could always select multiple objects, like that. Then usually in the Menu called Arrange you'll find Align. Here you can align the objects in different ways, left, center, and right that's for the position horizontally. Top, middle, and bottom is for the position vertically. So, for instance, if I do Middle, the middles of these objects will align. It doesn't matter how many objects I have. So I can have a whole bunch more, like this, and I can select them all, like that, and go to Arrange and then Align Objects and then Middle. Now they are all arranged so the centers all match. Usually you have other options. Like I can have the tops of the items all match, like that. 

As you would expect you'll find the same thing here in Keynote. I'll Align Objects and then do it with the Centers here. Notice the positions now. When I use Center it basically gets the average of all of those and puts the objects aligned with that. 

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But look what happens when I have a bunch of different objects. In general it should take the center between the right most and left most objects and then use that as the location. Here I am in FreeForm and you could find the same thing here. But unfortunately here in Preview you don't have any arrangement tools. 

Now another thing the Arrange Menu does in most apps is if you select multiple objects you, instead of aligning objects, can distribute them. So that will space them evenly, either horizontally or vertically, or both. So I can have them distributed horizontally evenly like that. It recognizes there are four objects and will put the centers of each of those objects an equal distance apart. You'll find the same thing here in Keynote. Notice it is still using the left most and right most object to get the left and right sides of this and then it is arranging everything between that. So you notice the left most and right most object don't move at all. It is just the other objects that are evenly distributed. You'll find the same thing here in FreeForm and here in Pixelmator Pro as well. It even gives you more options here so you can distribute based on the top edges, bottom edges, left edges, or right edges in addition to the centers. 

Now even if you knew about those previous two techniques I find a lot of people don't know about this one. It has been around, literally, since Desktop Publishing apps in the 1980's. If you are dragging something around and there is snapping involved, like your page is going to try to snap to the centers of things, other apps may have grids and guides that it snaps to. You can go into the Preferences and Settings and turn off all the snapping if you want to place with precision. Or you can simply hold the Command Key down when dragging. So, look what happens here. If I'm dragging normally, you can see how it is snapping to the tops, the bottoms, the centers, everything. But if I just hold the Command Key down while dragging that goes away. Suddenly it moves fluidly without the snapping. So if I want to place it, say, just above this but that's not quite right. I can just hold the Command Key down and place it exactly where I want. 

This works in so many apps. Here I am in Keynote and holding the Command Key down now suddenly gets rid of all the snapping. Here I am in FreeForm and I even have it snapping to the grid in Freeform but if I hold the Command Key down suddenly it's not longer snapping to the grid or other objects. Here in Pixelmator Pro the same thing. It snaps to Guide. It snaps to Grid. It snaps to other objects. But holding the Command Key down makes that all go away and you can place something exactly where you want it. Yes, even in Preview this works. Notice how that this snaps to the other objects to align. But if I hold the Command Key down that goes away and I can place it wherever I want. 

This is the very technique that inspired me to do this video. A lot of people don't know the Command Key is almost universal through all Mac Apps in ignoring the snapping and grids when placing objects. It comes in very handy and I use it every day. 

Now the one last technique I want to show you is another one that some of you may know and other may not. It is simply that you can type exact numbers to place things.  So yes you can drag around and yes you can use the arrow keys. But here in Pages if, with an object selected, you go to Format, Arrange you actually have Position here and you can set the position to an exact number. So in this case the Pages document is set to use inches. So, I can set it to exactly 2 inches. I can use these little arrows to move it around. I can have it be precise, like 2.01 like that. The numbers that are used, if you don't like inches, you can change those by going to Pages, Settings, then look under Rulers and you can set the ruler units to points. Notice now that it is set to points. You can change the exact point location for every object. 

You can also change the size of objects too. So when it comes to dragging to resize something you can use this and actually change the numbers to get exactly what you want. As you probably guessed it's the same in Keynote. You can move objects around, then go to Format, Arrange and you've got Position and you've got Size and you can set those numbers manually to what you want. As you can imagine Pixelmator Pro has this as well. You need to be using the Arrange Tool here. So if you are in the Paint Tool you won't see it. But in the Arrange Tool you'll see Size and Position. You can set that to precise locations for different objects. 

Sadly, however, FreeForm doesn't have the ability to do that. You see the X and Y location as you're dragging and using the Command Key you can kind of place things exactly if you're patient. But there is no place where you can actually edit the numbers. The same for Preview. There's no place here where you can add the numbers. You can't even see the numbers. So if you want to place something with precision here you really need to get as close as you can by dragging and then use the arrow keys. 

So if you want to place objects precisely in apps on your Mac learn those four tools. Use the arrow keys, use the Arrangement Tools to align and distribute objects, use the Command Key to circumvent snapping and look for ways to set the exact X and Y position of objects in the app you're using. Hope you found this useful. 

Thanks for watching.