# Use element styles

Styles are a powerful feature of Comic Life: they let you define a standard look for elements across pages. For example if you have a caption style that centers text, makes it bold, and increases the font size to 16 points, you can select a caption and then click on that caption style. The text automatically centers, changes to bold and resizes to 16 points.

You can create your own element style by customizing the look of an element - applying your own color, border, fill, and so on - then saving the look as a new style that you can apply to other elements.

1. Click to select an image, balloon, caption, lettering, panel, or shape.

   Tip: To save time, you can select multiple elements and apply the same style to them all at once.

2. In the Format sidebar, click the Style tab.
3. Select a style at the top of the sidebar (click the left or right arrow to see more styles).

If you want to save your changes as a new element style, follow the steps in the next task, "Create a new element style."

1. Click to select the image, balloon, caption, lettering, panel, or shape with the changes you want to save as a new style.
2. In the Format sidebar, click the Style tab.
3. Click the arrow to the right of the style thumbnails to go to the last group of styles.
4. Click the "+" button to add your style.
5. The style appears as the last thumbnail.

You can delete styles you don't want, but the default style cannot be deleted.

- Delete a style: Control-click the style, then choose Delete Style.

You can quickly change the look of all elements that have the same style applied.

1. Click to select one of the elements whose style you want to modify, then make your changes.
2. Select the element you just modified (if it's no longer selected).
3. In the Format sidebar, click the Style tab.
4. Control-click the currently applied style, then choose "Redefine Style from Selection".

## See also

Add an outline

Fill element with color, halftone or an image

Add a shadow

Change opacity or blend mode