Design editor and templates

Where the design comes from

When it writes the draft, OrganicDeck looks at the reference's slides and takes their design: the format, where the text sits, its size, color and box, how the image sits and how much it's darkened. If the reference's cover looks different from the rest, like a large heading in another color, your first slide takes the cover's design, and its format if it has another one, like a 9:16 cover before 4:3 slides. A reference without photos gets TikTok's default design. With a template, the slideshow takes the template's design instead.

The line above the slides says which one it is, like "3:4 · Design of @yourapp", "TikTok's design" or the template's name.

Text is set in the kind of letters the reference uses: TikTok Sans with the weight of TikTok's Classic style for plain letters, Playfair Display for letters with serifs, and in italics when the reference's are. There's no shadow or other effect until you add one.

Every slide keeps the reference's text size. If a slide's text doesn't fit, it moves up, and only a text taller than the slide gets smaller, on that slide alone. A word wider than the text box, like a link, continues on the next line.

Once you change something on a slide in the editor, its texts stay where they are, at their size. What you write grows down from where each text starts, and the text below follows the heading: if the heading gains or loses lines, the text moves by the same amount. A change you ask for, or another hook, only changes that slide's words. Slides you haven't touched are laid out again from the reference.

Find your way around

• Move around the canvas with the trackpad or the mouse wheel (hold ⇧ to move sideways), or hold Space and drag. Pinch, or hold ⌘ or Ctrl and scroll, to zoom. ⇧1 shows every slide and ⇧2 the selected one.
• The ? in the bottom-right corner of the canvas, or the ? key, lists every shortcut and control with your computer's keys.
• Layers lists each slide with its texts and images. The Images tab beside it shows the images on each slide, which you swap by dragging one onto another, and the images of your boards, which you drag onto a slide.
• Properties shows what you selected. Each section says whether it changes This slide or All slides.
• Click to select. Click an empty spot or press Escape to let go. Each Escape goes up one level: from a text to its slide, from the slide to nothing, and then it closes the editor.
• Double-click a text to type in place. Escape, ⌘Enter or a click outside saves it. Double-click an image to crop it.
• ⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes. Done closes the editor.
• On a phone, the canvas is on top and the properties below.

Text

• Position: X, Y and W, the width of its box. Dragging the sides changes where lines break, not the size of the letters.
• Typography: font, weight, size, line height, letter spacing, alignment, capitals, italics and underline. Auto size follows the reference. Besides TikTok Sans there's a set of free fonts, Arial and Arial Narrow.
• Fill: the color, from TikTok's colors or any other.
• Box: None, Solid or See-through, like TikTok's text background.
• Effect: None, Shadow, Outline or Glow.

Underline (⌘U) underlines the selected text. While you're typing in a text, it underlines only the letters you select, or, if none are selected, what you type next. Italic (⌘I) sets the whole text in italics.

A text's style changes only on its slide. When the slides no longer share a style, Apply to all, in the header of Typography, makes this slide's style the one for the whole slideshow.

To change several texts at once, ⇧-click them, even on different slides, like the headings of slides 2 to 6. A change in Typography, Fill, Box or Effect applies to all of them at once, and so does W in Position. On one slide, dragging a side of the box around them makes them all wider or narrower, and texts one below another keep the space between them. Where they differ, the field says Mixed.

Deleting a slide's heading or text also empties those words in the draft. ⌘Z brings them back.

Images and slides

• Change opens the grid to pick another image, for the slideshow's images and for the ones you added. Random puts in another one without opening anything: from the slideshow's boards, or from Your product if the image came from there. ⌘Z undoes either.
• Behind the text or In front of the text puts an image under the slide's texts or over them. Images you add start in front, and the slideshow's images start behind. A background photo always stays behind.
• The slide's heading and text don't run into the slideshow's images: a line that would reach one wraps before it, on the side with more room. If there's no room beside the image, the text stays over it. An image set In front of the text covers them. Once you move, resize or rotate an image, or move or resize a text, it stays where you put it: the text no longer wraps around the image, and the image can go over it.
• When the text sits beside an image and continues below it, each part is a separate text in Layers. Moving, resizing, editing or deleting one leaves the others where they are. All parts keep the style of the slide's text.
• Crop, or a double-click: the sides and corners of the frame change which part shows while the image stays still. Reset shows the whole image again and Done ends it.
• Zoom goes from 100%, where the image fills its frame, to 400%.
• The corners resize an image and keep its shape. The sides change only its width or its height, and the photo fills the frame again.
• Rotation takes an angle, Rotate 90°, Flip horizontal and Flip vertical (⇧H and ⇧V). You can also rotate by dragging just outside a corner, and hold ⇧ to turn in steps of 15°. Texts don't rotate.
• A background photo fills the slide. You can crop it, zoom it and flip it, and Darken it on that slide. The trash button next to it removes it.

Two images in a box show whole, side by side or one above the other, whichever shows them larger. With a slide selected, Properties also has the Background color and its Format: 3:4, 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 4:3. It changes only that slide, and Apply to all gives every slide its format. With nothing selected, Format sets every slide. Reset slide brings the slide back to the slideshow's design.

Add and arrange

• Text, or the T key, adds a text to the selected slide and opens it for typing. Its words belong to the design only. They aren't in the draft's text, in Copy text or in Copy JSON, and a change asked in words doesn't rewrite them.
• Image adds an image from Your product or from a board. In Boards, Random adds one from the board shown, preferring one the slideshow doesn't use yet. You can also drag an image from the Images tab onto the canvas.
• ⌘C, ⌘X, ⌘V and ⌘D copy, cut, paste and duplicate. ⌘V also pastes an image, an image link or a text copied in another app. An image you paste goes only on the slide you paste it on; to use it in other slideshows, upload it to Your product.
• Delete or Backspace removes what's selected.
• Select several things on one slide with ⇧-click, by dragging a box from an empty spot, or with ⌘A. They move together, also with the arrow keys. With ⇧, the arrows move 10 px. You can also select texts on different slides.
• Align lines them up To each other or, with one thing selected, To the slide. With three or more, you can also distribute their spacing.
• Group (⌘G) keeps them together, so one click selects the whole group. Ungroup (⇧⌘G) undoes it.

Templates and guides

The reference sets what a slideshow says, and a template sets how it looks. Save the design of a slideshow you adjusted and your next slideshows can start with it, so everything an account posts keeps the same look. A template keeps the format, background, text styles and boxes, where images go, guides and grid. Texts and images you added go into it only when they're on every slide after the first, like a logo. Something on a single slide, like a screenshot of your product, stays on that slide. Anyone in the project can create, change and remove templates.

• Save template, next to Download, saves the selected slide, or the one in the middle of the view. If the first slide looks different from the rest, the template keeps it as the cover, with what you added to it.
• When the slideshow came from a template, Save template also offers Update "name", which saves your changes to that template.
• Once the project has templates, Templates in the editor's toolbar shows each one as it looks. Click one to use it on this slideshow. ⌘Z undoes it.
• Design, at the bottom of the new slideshow form, shows From the reference and your templates, each drawn with one of your slideshows. It starts on From the reference every time. With a template, the slideshow starts with that design, and the reference only sets how it's written.
• On a slideshow's page, Design, next to Images, changes its template. Undo brings back the design it had.
• Removing a template doesn't change the slideshows that used it.

To build a template without a design tool, pick as the reference a post with the look you want, write the slideshow, adjust it and save it.

With a slide selected, or nothing, the Guides section of Properties adds a vertical or a horizontal guide and sets a Grid size in pixels. Guides are red lines across every slide. Drag one to move it, or drag it off the slide to remove it. Texts and images snap to guides and grid lines as you move them. They never show in downloads or in what goes to TikTok.

Download the slides

Download, in the editor and in the panel beside the draft, saves every slide as a JPEG 1080 px wide, with its fonts and everything you edited.

• On a computer you get a ZIP named after the hook.
• On a phone, Save to phone opens the share sheet. If the slides take a while to prepare, the button asks for a second tap.

To send them straight to a TikTok account, see Send to TikTok.