Changing the sheets

The Pages menu turns a sheet, mirrors it, or draws it again at another size. The Legal menu stamps a running number or a word across every page. All five commands have to decide which sheets to act on, and they do not all decide it the same way. Check what is picked in the sidebar before you press one, on a document where only some of its pages are selected.

Turning a sheet

Pages ▸ Rotate Left · Rotate Right · Rotate 180° turn a sheet a quarter turn, a quarter turn the other way, or half a turn.

They act on whatever is picked in the sidebar, or on the page in front if nothing is picked. Every command that changes sheets follows this same rule. Pick six sheets and press Rotate Right, and all six turn in one undo step. One press of ⌘Z puts them all back.

There is no keyboard shortcut for these commands, on purpose. ⌘[ and ⌘] already mean Back and Forward, and plain ⌘R already means Save Changes Automatically. Either shortcut would have taken over something you already use elsewhere. You can also turn a page with a two-finger rotation gesture on the trackpad. Only the angle you land on when you lift your fingers is recorded, not every degree along the way.

A turn is a change to the document like any other: it needs saving, and it appears in History as "rotated."

Mirroring a sheet

Pages ▸ Flip Horizontally and Flip Vertically draw a mirror image of a sheet and put it in the original's place. That is different from rotating. A quarter turn is a fact the page carries, and every reader honours it. A mirror image has to be drawn: the page's content is redrawn through a reversed transform into a fresh page. A picture stays a picture at its own resolution, and text stays text, only the wrong way round. The marks on the sheet are turned over with it and stay marks: a highlight is still a highlight afterwards, in its new place, and can be picked and removed as before.

Flip acts on whatever is picked in the sidebar, or the page in front if nothing is picked. This is the same rule as Rotate. Pick the sheets first and they mirror together in one undo step.

"Horizontal" and "vertical" follow what you see on screen, not the page's own box. A sheet already turned sideways flips along the axis it looks flipped along, rather than the axis underneath.

Drawing a sheet at another size

Pages ▸ Adjust Size… draws the picked sheets, or the one in front if none are picked, again at a size you choose. Set the size in pixels, as a percentage, or fitted within a common size such as 1920 × 1080. With several sheets of different sizes, a proportional width applies to each, and its own height follows. One dialog can resize a mixed batch sensibly.

This redraws the sheet as a picture, whatever it held before. A scanned page becomes a picture at a new resolution, which is what the command is for. But a sheet that still held real, searchable text becomes a picture too, and the words are gone afterward. You can no longer select or search text on that sheet, only look at it as an image. Resize a page you still need to search or select from a copy, never the original.

One undo step covers however many sheets you resized, whatever their sizes.

Numbering the pages

Legal ▸ Number the Pages… runs a Bates numbering sequence over the picked pages, or the whole document if none are picked. The sequence is a prefix and a padded running number, such as SMITH-000001. The number is a mark that belongs to its own page, not ink burned into the picture. Moving, inserting or removing pages carries each number along with the page it was put on, instead of leaving it behind.

The dialog remembers your prefix, digit count and corner between runs. It offers to start one past the highest number already stamped under that prefix in this document. That way, numbering next month's batch continues this one without you having to look up where it left off. Running the command again over pages that already carry numbers replaces them.

Take the Numbers Off clears every page in the document, whatever is picked in the sidebar. Number the Pages respects a picked selection; its opposite does not. Taking numbers off is one act over the whole file, not a selection.

A number is a mark until you make it permanent. Every ordinary PDF reader already shows it, because it is written as a standard annotation, not something only this application understands. See Making marks permanent for what that step does and does not do.

Watermarking

Legal ▸ Watermark… stamps a word, or a saved picture, at a chosen place on every picked page, or all of them if none are picked. It is a mark until you make it permanent, and it is not security. A watermark says who a copy went to; it does not stop that person doing anything with it.

The text can hold {date}, {time}, {name} and {page}, filled in as the stamp is made. {page} becomes each page's own number, so one piece of text correctly stamps every sheet in the run. {name} comes from the reviewer name set under Review ▸ Your Name…. Stamp the same watermark from the command line, and {name} is left in as literal text, because the command has no reviewer name to give it.

Nine named places sit in the corners, edges and centre of the page. Each is kept as a share of the page, not a fixed point. A stamp lands in the same place on an A4 letter and an A3 exhibit in the same production. If you have already dragged a crop rectangle on the page in front of you, a tenth choice appears: Where the rectangle is. It puts the stamp at its centre instead of one of the nine.

Strength is how strongly the word is drawn. Faint is a quiet identifier, meant to be found rather than read. Strong is a legend such as DRAFT, meant to be seen. A picture from your saved signatures can stand in for the word. Pick one and the text is ignored, because a logo with a word across it is two marks pretending to be one.

Take the Watermark Off clears every page, whatever is picked in the sidebar. This is the same asymmetry as the Bates numbers, and for the same reason.

From the command line

caseleaf watermark puts the same stamp on every page of a file, or takes it off, without opening the application:

caseleaf watermark <file> --to <output> --text "DRAFT" --place centre

--picture, --size, --opacity and --clear match the dialog's picture, size, strength and Take the Watermark Off.

Turning, flipping and resizing have commands of their own: rotate, flip and resize, each taking --pages to say which sheets. Bates numbering has no command-line form yet; reach it from the Legal menu.

Watch: a short video for this page is still to come.

Working with pages · Contents