I need to reproduce a cover originally done in InDesign. I have to finish this by Monday morning. I have a PDF of the cover from InDesign, which I placed on a Background layer and set opacity of the Background layer to 20%. I just wanted the image there so I could recreate all the objects and position them the same as they were in the original. Then I created a New Layer to place all the new objects on. My plan was to delete the Background layer after recreating all the objects on the New Layer.
Output will be to my own Xerox Phaser 7400DN. I have it mostly done, so I decided to print it to see how it looked. The printout came out blank. In the Layers window I have the background layer unchecked for printing, and the New Layer checked. All the objects that I created are on the new layer. They appear fine on screen, but none will print. Exporting to PDF results in a blank PDF. However, If I uncheck the visible icon for the Background in the Layers palette, everything disappears from the screen. It appears that all the objects that are on the New Layer are really on the Background layer. So I opened the Outline window, right-clicked on each object, and saw that every one is on the New Layer. Also, even with the Background layer visible and selected, I cannot select the background image. Also, the Background layer and the PDF image on it do not appear in Outline. So my first problem is, what is wrong with my layers? My second problem is the page size. The cover will be printed on 12 inch by 18 inch heavy stock. In the Xerox print options this is referred to as Tabloid Extra. In Scribus I see no such page size option, or anything close to it. So I chose Custom, and then set the height to 864 points and the width to 1296 points. So far so good, but the button for Portrait-Landscape remains on Portrait. Worse, the size of the sheet on screen is 864 points wide and 1296 points high. If I use the button to select Landscape then Scribus swaps the numbers for height and width so the page is still portrait. So my second question is, how do I create a 12 x 18 inch landscape page?
