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Action Rings: Making Home Printing Reliable

Action Rings are visible circular markers that you can place on your pages. They are designed to solve the most common problem with DIY interactive books: home printer reliability.

Normally, audio pens work by reading tiny "OID dots" printed over your artwork. However, home printers often use black ink (carbon) that interferes with these dots, especially on dark colors or photos.

Action Rings solve this by creating a dedicated, "clean" space for the pen to read.

Why use Action Rings?

  1. 100% Reliability: The interior of the ring is always pure white, ensuring the pen can read the dots perfectly every time.
  2. Dark Colors & Photos: You no longer need to worry about your artwork being too dark or colorful for the pen.
  3. One-Step Printing: They allow you to print your interactive pages in a single pass on a standard color printer without complex "Two-Step" masking.
  4. Visual Cues: They provide a clear visual indicator for the user (especially children) of where to touch the pen.

How to Enable Action Rings

You can enable Action Rings globally for your project:

  1. Open your project in Studio.
  2. Go to Project Settings (the gear icon).
  3. Toggle the switch labeled "Use Action Rings".

Once enabled, a ring will automatically appear next to every Region (Touch Area) you have created.

Customizing Your Rings

You can customize how Action Rings look and where they sit on the page.

Positioning

By default, Soniq automatically places the ring 5mm to the right of your Touch Area.

  • Move them: You can click and drag an Action Ring to any position. Soniq will remember its custom position.

Styling

When you click on an Action Ring in the editor, the properties panel allows you to change:

  • Size: Choose between Small, Medium, or Large.
  • Color: Select a color from the palette that best matches your book's design or helps it stand out.

Printing with Action Rings

When you are ready to print, go to Print to PDF*.

If you have Action Rings enabled, the "One-Step" printing method will automatically use them. SoniqPen will print your artwork normally but will place the OID dots only inside the white center of your Action Rings. This guarantees that your pen will work perfectly, regardless of the quality of your printer or the darkness of your ink.