The Journal Newsletter
Introduction
It’s Back to School time here in the United States! For The Journal, though, there are *always* discounts for students and teachers (and lots of other people): Discounts Available
A new update of The Journal 6 is now available. Check out “The Journal News” below for all the details, but the summary is: The Journal now has doodles! Yes, you heard right. You can now doodle in your entries–and even doodle on any image or photograph!
In honor of the new update, this month’s tip tells you how to doodle in your entries. Plus, we have a couple new writing prompts.
Thank you for choosing The Journal!
The Journal News
The Journal 7 is the current release.
To see if you have the latest version of The Journal:
- Click on the “Help” menu in The Journal.
- Choose “Check for Update of The Journal”.
If you are using The Journal 6 (or an earlier version):
Tips & Tricks
TIP: How to Doodle in The Journal
Doodling in your entries is simple: Click on the Insert menu and choose “Insert Doodle”. (There’s also a button on the toolbar.)
Doodles are images in your entries that you can draw on. Just click on the doodle to activate the doodler. When you click on any other part of your entry, the doodler deactivates and the doodle looks and behaves just like any other image. You can have as many doodles in an entry as you want. You can use “Edit Properties & Layout” (on the right-click menu) to make your entry text wrap around the doodle on the left or right. You can copy and paste the doodle–even into other software (where it will be a normal PNG or JPG image).
You can also click-and-drag on the edges of the doodle to make it larger or smaller. Unlike images, though, when you make a doodle smaller, you’re cropping off whatever was there.
The doodler offers these graphic tools:
- Brush – click-and-drag to draw with varying line widths.
- Eraser – click-and-drag to draw with the background color and “erase” what you’ve done.
- Rectangle & Ellipse – click-and-drag to draw simple shapes, outline or solid, with varying line widths.
- Fill – click where you want to “flood fill” an area with the foreground color.
- Text – add text to the doodle using any font you have on your computer.
- Selection – select a portion of the image to either delete or use for “crop to selection”.
And you can do any of these using the color you select on the palette.
Plus, the doodler supports full undo & redo. NOTE: If you bring up another entry in the same category, the undo/redo is lost. But so long as you’re in the same entry, you can turn the doodler on and off and always have undo/redo.
The doodler tries to keep its controls out of your way while you work. For example, the color palette shows only the currently selected foreground and background colors until you hover the mouse over them. Then the palette appears (and disappears after you move away).
The options for the various graphic tools work the same way. When you click to select a tool, the options available for that tool appear, but disappear when you move the mouse away.
Finally, you can change a doodle to a normal image. Right-click on the doodle and choose “Convert Doodle to Image”. (But don’t worry: You can still doodle on it. See the next tip.)
TIP: How to Doodle on an Image
You can use The Journal’s doodler to do simple editing for any image in your entries. For example, a digital photograph. Right-click on the image and choose “Doodle on Image”. That will make the image a doodle and allow you to edit it.
NOTE: If an image has been resized (for example to be just a thumbnail), when it’s converted to a doodle, it will be at its full size.
All the doodler’s graphic tools are available (see previous tip), so you can crop the image. Add text captions. Draw halos or anything else you want to do. Have fun with it! =)
Writing Prompts
Free Writing Prompt – Write for 20 minutes using the following as your starter/inspiration: “Pencil Case”
Free Writing Prompt – Write for 20 minutes using the following as your starter/inspiration: “Sketching”
Submission Information
If you would like to contribute to the “How I Use The Journal”, “Writing Exercises”, or “Tips & Tricks” sections, or would like to submit an article about journaling, writing, or another The Journal-related topic, we would love to hear from you.
Submissions for the newsletter should be sent to: support@davidrm.com
If you are submitting for a particular section, please indicate which one. Try to limit your submissions to 500-1000 words. Submissions may be edited for length and content.
If you prefer to remain anonymous, please state this in the email. Otherwise your name (but not your email) will be used in the article heading.
As always, if you have any suggestions for, or bug reports about, The Journal, please feel free to email them. Both are always welcome.