Click here to make sure you are using the latest version (and date!) of our products. Compare to the version (and date) listed in About of Help menu of your product. Check the "Changes in Each Version" section of User Manual in Help menu for the differences between each version.
Having trouble getting what I purchased?
If you have not yet purchased one of products and you wish to, then please go instead to:
http://coolpage.com/unlock.html
The following only applies to customers who have purchased one of our products. We now have a new system which allows our customers to see all the products they have purchased from us. You may access this system at following web page:
http://coolpage.com/upgrade.html
At the above web page, you can log into your account to see your purchases, then refund, download again the full version, or upgrade to newer versions and/or more expensive versions (Pro or Webmaster). Also when you log in you can update your email address and other personal info.
When you purchase our products, make sure you first uninstall the free or trial version and then download and install the full version. When you upgrade our products, make sure you first uninstall the previous version.
Also make sure that you install the correct file. Do not accidentally install the free version or old version again. The best way to insure this is to take note of the name and location of the file you download from our My Purchases system. Make sure that is the file you run to install the new or full version. To verify which version you installed, see About in the Help menu.
See previous answer on how to log in at My Purchases at DownloadFAST.com. You may refund thru My Purchases easily without our assistance, but you will be blocked from future purchases at DownloadFAST.com. If you want us to process your refund, so that you are not blocked, then we require you email us with specific and detailed examples of what did not work as expected for you in our product. Note that products purchased via check or Evergreen/Ordering Networks can not be refunded. Products purchased on DownloadFAST.com can be refunded within 30 days of purchase, unless they have been upgraded or purchased via check or wire transfer.
We no longer issue unlock codes. Instead customers who purchase from us, can log in at any time to download and then install the full version. See previous answer for more details.
Am I using full version or free trial version?
Go to About in the Help menu. In the box that appears, if it says "locked" or "free" then you are using the free trial version. If it says "unlocked", "Std", "Pro", or "Webmaster" then it means you are using a full version edition. Note that the "Buy..." and "Benefits of Buying..." are still shown in the Help menu of Cool Page full version. This is normal and is just to remind you what you have purchased, and to help you should you want to purchase a 2nd copy for a friend, etc.
Also, please remember to UNinstall the free trial version from your computer and then install the full version. Some people download the full version but forget to install it.
Change my email address or personal info?
Please log in at following web page to change your email address and personal info instantly. Remember to update your email address here BEFORE you lose access to your old email address, or at least remember your password.
http://coolpage.com/upgrade.html
Transfer ownership of ALL my products?
See previous answer. Just log in and change the personal info.
Transfer ownership of ONE but not ALL of my products?
This is not possible at this time. At this time, we only support transfering ownership of ALL your products listed when you log in. See previous answer also.
My credit card was declined on DownloadFAST.com?
Please read very carefully the decline messages and instructions given to you by DownloadFAST.com. Those messages explain fully why your card has been declined and what you can do, if anything, to override the decline.
We use DownloadFAST.com to manage the sales of our product(s). After purchasing our product(s), you may optionally deliver all of your products, even those from other vendors, on a single CDROM from DownloadFAST.com. Go to order page for any one of our products at DownloadFAST.com, for more information on the CDROM option. Note that you may proceed to download the purchased products in addition to receiving them on CDROM.
See also Publishing at http://CoolPageHelp.com. If Publish reported success, but the page is not updated or has missing objects when viewed in your browser then try:
Else if Publish reported failure then try:
Here follows some extra descriptions of Publish settings:
FTP site:
Please do not put subfolders on this line, see "Folder" below instead. This is not the same as your web address. Web addresses are for viewing your web page in the browser, whereas FTP is for transferring files to the server prior to viewing them on web.
Name:
For logging on to the FTP site. This is not always (often not) the same as your Dialup member name. User/Member name is synonmous with Name. Often this is the name you use to login into the members section of the Host's web site. And it is often (not always) the same as the first part of your email address (the portion before the @ sign).
Password:
For logging on to the FTP site. This is not always (often not) the same as your Dialup member name. Often this is the password you use to login into the members section of the Host's web site. And it is often (not always) the same as the password you use to check your email.
Folder:
Any subfolder required by the Host, some Hosts require public_html or www here. Do not ever end Folder with / character. Also you can add folders here to create "sub-sites" within your main web site.
Background of Cool Page is messed up?
See also Troubleshooting at http://CoolPageHelp.com. This problem apparently only affects people using an ATI video card, or using a rebranded video card using ATI technology. According to Microsoft circular, there is a fix to this problem. Simply insert the following line of text in the C:\Windows\system.ini file just below the line "[Display]":
DevBMP=0
Note, that is a zero, NOT a capital O.
And remember to restart your computer.If the above doesn't work, you can set the background of your web page to any image (but not solid color), using Background in Edit menu (or drag a Background from Objects window), and this will fix the problem as well. Or if you prefer, read the Getting Started section of User Manual in Help menu, for another solution which deals with editing the performance settings for your video card.
We are further investigating this problem and expect to work an automatic fix into Cool Page installer in future release. Please use the above solutions in mean time. Please send us an email and lets us know which of the above solutions work best for you. We are collecting user reports to get a good feel for which solution works best.
If I purchase or upgrade, will I lose my existing pages?
No. Before you purchase or upgrade, UNinstall the current version of Cool Page on your computer. This will not delete the existing web pages you made with Cool Page. And these pages will open and edit fine in the purchased or upgraded version. However, please note the following caveats:
See also BackUp Files at http://CoolPageHelp.com. It is not enough to save your web pages on your hard disk and Publish them. You must also make backup copies on floppy disk or other external media. If not, and if your hard disk where to fail or get a virus, then you could lose all your web pages. Also remember to save your web pages as Cool Page files (the ones with the "thumbs up" icon). Cool Page can also save HTML files, but it can not open HTML files. Cool Page can not recover your web pages from the Host. When saving your pages to floppy as a backup copy, also remember to manually copy any custom images you are using, Cool Page does not store these in the Cool Page file. If the Cool Page file has grown too large to save to floppy, then consider reducing the number of Undo steps retained in Preferences in Edit menu. In a future version of Cool Page, the files will be further compressed to make them much smaller.
It is the complete version with all features enabled. The difference between the full version editions and the free trial version is detailed in "Buy Cool Page" section of User Manual in Help menu of any edition. You can also get a summary of these edition differences by checking the descriptions linked from the Buy page. For changes between versions, see the "Changes in Each Version" section of User Manual in Help menu.
What do I get when I buy product?
See previous answer.
Differences between Free, Standard, Pro, and Webmaster editions?
See previous answer.
Warning messages about image files on start every time?
Delete the following folder from your computer. On installation, Cool Page copies images which already exist elsewhere on your system into the following folder in the Cool Page installation. Some computers have images which contain errors that are incompatible with Cool Page and browsers:
C:\Program Files\3Dize\Cool Page\Objects\My Computer
Why disabled scroll bar on my non-Frame Set page?
This only happens in IE3 and IE4 browsers when the web page is smaller than browser window. Since most people are upgrading to IE5 or later, we advise not being worried about this. The scroll bar is unnecessary in this case, but older IE will not hide it. Yet it is merely an nuisance and doesn't cause the page to malfuntion and only affects a very small percent of visitors. There are 3 solutions to this problem:
Installation errors on black screen?
This no longer occurs in the latest version of Cool Page. During installation of older versions of Cool Page, there were errors which appeared in a black screen with white text about files not copied or not found.
Safely ignore these errors. The installer is attempting to copy preexisting images from elsewhere on your computer into the Cool Page install folder so you can access them in the My Computer section of Cool Page's Objects window. It is normal to not have any such images on your computer.
See also Sounds at http://CoolPageHelp.com. You can drag sounds to the background of web page being edited in Cool Page to set background sounds. (This is synonomous with accessing the Browse button after selecting Background from Edit menu) This answer applies to sound formats like midi, au and small wav files which are reasonably small enough in size and load time to be used as a background sound. Slow loading sounds or video should always be linked to as mentioned in following answer. Or, if you prefer to have links to sounds that play when the item is clicked on, or when mouse is hovered over the item, then see following answer.
See also Linking at http://CoolPageHelp.com. Use Wizard in the Help menu of Cool Page to do links to anything such as links to other web pages, music, download files, video, send you email, etc. Follow the instructions that Wizard gives to you. Also read the entire CoolPage User Manual in Help menu.
If "Link so visitor can send you email" Wizard choice is not working for you or a visitor, it is because the email settings are not configured properly in the browser. Each visitor must have email configured in browser for this type of link to work for that visitor.
To play sounds on mouse over, or on other Events, right-click any image and see the Events section of Image Object properties.
Linking to an anchor on another page will not work correctly in Netscape 4 browsers. The top of the correct page will appear instead of the anchor position. This only affects links to anchors on another page. Links to anchors on same page work fine. And this only affects people who are viewing the page in Netscape 4 browser and only for version 4 Browser Compatibility setting in Cool Page Preferences. Given that Netscape 6 browser is released and given that this problem does not effect Internet Explorer, then only a very small and diminishing % of visitors would be affected. Also linking to anchors usually is done from the same page. This is a minor nuisance only in Netscape 4 with minimal and rare impact on the visitor, that we can not easily work around so we intend to solve it by letting those few people affected to upgrade to Netscape 6.
Put downloadable files on my web page?
See previous answer. These downloads can be anything, such as mp3 music, program files, or Adobe Acrobat documents. Any file you want to link to.
Put video on the web page so it appears without clicking?
See also Multimedia at http://CoolPageHelp.com. You can use the <EMBED> HTML programming tag in the HTML Object in Insert menu to do this if you know what you are doing. This tag is discussed in User Manual in Help-- just search for it. Don't forget to Browse for the video file etc (see one of answers below for more info). However, we do not advise using <EMBED> tag, as it is incompatible with some browsers, may make your web page load very slowly, and may cause confusing popup messages to appear for visitors who don't have correct browser plugin installed. We much prefer to recommend the previous answer of linking to the video. You can make a small image or gif animation to preview the video and then link it to the actual video. Your visitors will thank you for giving them the option to click the link or not.
Javascript such as mouseovers and other tricks?
Right-click any image and see the Events section of Image Object properties. Also visit our official help web site:
See also Events at http://CoolPageHelp.com.
Add guestbook, chat, discussion forum, popup menus, etc?
See also Java Scripts at http://CoolPageHelp.com. With each new version of Cool Page, we add more of these to Objects window. For example, you can find guestbooks in the Link To section and a Web Search in the Control section of the Objects window. Simply drag+drop these to your web page. Look for more of these in each new version of Cool Page. We plan to add popup (drop down) menus and other forms Controls to Control section of Objects window soon.
Additionally, search the web for some HTML for any type of custom thing you want to add, then add it using Paste HTML in Edit menu (or synonomously HTML Object in Insert menu). We do not offer specialized help on all the infinite HTML available on the web. When you use the Paste HTML or HTML Object features of Cool Page, then you are on your own to work out any problems with HTML obtained from companies other than us.
To work with all browsers this requires a program to reside on the Host (server). There is no standard for this, so we are trying to formulate a way to make this work on any Host. FrontPage has something called FrontPage Extensions which is a standard that many Hosts support. We hope to have a solution in an upcoming version soon.
HTML import so I can import pages from other software?
A future version of Cool Page will have a WYSIWYG HTML import feature. We apologize that we do not have that feature yet. We do have Paste HTML in Edit menu which you can use to insert "snippets" of HTML, but it is not appropriate for importing whole pages because Paste HTML is not WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
Image file names have a numbered appended?
This will happen for any image you have resized smaller in Cool Page, when you Preview, Publish or Export. This is necessary to output the optimized images. This optimization makes much faster loading web pages and better looking images. If you don't wish for an image to be optimized by Cool Page, then don't resize it in Cool Page. To stop the renaming of images and get an optimized result, simply replace the image with the optimized one, by right-clicking the image and using Browse button in Image Object Properties. Note that version 2.1 of Cool Page has a bug where the name of the optimized image file is different every time. Please upgrade to later version of Cool Page for fix.
To edit an existing web page made with Cool Page, simply edit the Cool Page file for the web page (file has "thumbs up" icon). Typically you will find the recently edited files in the bottom of File menu. Else choose Open in File menu and locate the Cool Page file on your computer. Then Publish again to replace the page on the Internet
If you get the error "Not a Cool Page file...", this either means you are attempting Open a file which is not in Cool Page format. Or it means the Cool Page file is corrupted. Web pages in other formats can not be edited in Cool Page. Use Import in File menu to insert items in supported formats into your web page. Use Paste HTML to insert snippets of HTML. There is currently no way to import or insert a whole page of HTML into Cool Page format. For a corrupted Cool Page file case, revert to your backup copy (see info in this FAQ advising the use of backups). If you do not have a backup copy for a corrupted file, then you will have to recreate the page. See following answer in that case. Note, corrupted files are rare and are not caused by Cool Page. Typically files get corrupted when computer crashes, is turned off before being shut down, overwritten by accident using another program, etc. This is why we advise keeping backup copies as a precaution.
See previous answer. If you get "Where is...?" messages while opening a Cool Page file, it means some of the images for the page are not found. Simply choose any replacement image instead to succeed in opening the file. Then later you can try to locate the necessary image. One way to recover lost images is to visit an existing version of the page on the Internet using your web browser. Then right-click the images in the browser and save them to your computer. Then right-click the images in Cool Page and Browse to set the correct image. This technique can also be helpful in manually creating pages in Cool Page format from existing pages in HTML or other format viewed in browser. Similarly, one can select text with mouse in the browser, then choose Copy from Edit menu in browser, then choose Paste in Edit menu in Cool Page to paste into current page being edited in Cool Page.
See also How to safeguard my web pages
Suggest you make a new folder to save each web site and at least change the (member/user) Name in Publish for each web site. You can get a new (member/user) Name by either signing up for a new one at the free Hosts we suggest in Publish, or by buying a new Hosting account. Instead it is possible to put another web site within your web site, by adding a sub-folder in Folder in Publish.
Fit page to all possible browser window sizes?
Design your web page with your Display set to 640x480. And optionally choose to center the page, using the Center option in Page in Edit menu. Since most people have their Display set to at least 800x600 these days, we recommend designing at 800x600. The 640x480 people will still be able to view your whole page, albeit with a little horizontal scrolling. The Center option will make page centered horizontally on larger browser windows. To set the Display, go to Windows Start menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Settings.
There is currently no way to make your pages reformat to fit the width of the browser window, other than the Center and Middle options in Page in Edit menu. Reformatting of objects on the page would defeat the whole point of Cool Page's exact placement capability. However, we are investigating a new feature for a future version which would allow one to set regions that reformat to fit width. We have our reservations about such a proposed feature. A page which dynamically reformats to browser window width can do unexpected things to your web page. You must test and test if your layout is at all sophisticated. Example, say you made a single column of text to fit a narrow page, would you want it to expand out to full screen width if user was running 1280 x 1024?? Centering and accurate positioning seem to be more viable solutions for the casual web designer. We use non-expanding for our web site no problem.
Also a future version of Cool Page will have rulers so you can design to different window sizes without having to change your Display settings. Also we are considering a feature where you could design custom version of pages for other windows sizes and then the correct version of page would be chosen by detecting the visitor's browser window size.
The size of the web page is automatically determined by the boundary of objects on the page. Thus to extend the page horizontally or vertically, just place objects farther to the right or bottom respectively. If you want to place objects beyond the right or bottom edge of window then one way is to choose a small Zoom factor in Window menu. Then when you set Zoom back to 100%, you will have scroll bars for the web page. See also the previous answer.
In the future, we plan to add rulers and guides to aid in designing accurately for specific page sizes.
Publish to eBay or other auction sites?
The easiest way to do this is just link from your standard eBay page to a Cool Page web page you Published to another Host. In the near future, we will try to add one-button publishing to eBay.
See also Troubleshooting at http://CoolPageHelp.com. First make sure the Volume control for that type of sound is not turned off. Unfortunately Windows has numerous ways to get at the Volume controls. In most cases, the Volume controls are accessible from Windows TaskBar or from within Windows Media Player.
Otherwise the problem may be you are using a sound file type, or you using the sound in a way, which is not supported by your browser configuration. This can be caused by a non-standard browser configuration (e.g. certain installed plugins), a corrupt browser configuration, or an old browser configuration. Try upgrading your browser to the latest version. If this doesn't work, it likely means the sound file type is not supported by that browser version. For Internet Explorer, some people have suggested "use MS Update and download Media Player 6.4 or later", although we have not verified if this is a good solution in general.
We tested sounds of common file types on all popular browser and they all work fine assuming a standard virgin Windows, browser, and sound card installation. In our experience so far, most visitors can hear most common sound types. However, any number of things can cause visitor not hear sound:
The lesson here is to use sound as added feature for a web page, but do not rely on sounds for proper understanding of the web page. Most users can hear most common sound types, but do not rely on it.
See also Layers at http://CoolPageHelp.com. First, make sure you are not trying to Layer a restricted object such as the Cool Page Button ad or the Web Search. These are always forced to the top Layer.
If an object does not seem to respond correctly to Layer, or if the allowed Layer number range for it seems too small, the reason is probably the following. Cool Page version 2.5 and later has a new setting in HTML section of Preferences (Edit menu) named Compatible Browsers. When Compatible Browsers is set to "version 3.0" and an object is dragged inside of a Box or Line object, then it will become a child of that Box or Line. In other words, moving the Box or Line will move it's children along with it. Thus the child object can only be Layered with it's parent Box or Line. However, when this same page is then edited with Compatible Browsers set to "version 4.0", then then object can be dragged outside of it's parent Box or Line, but Cool Page does not remove it from it's parent Box or Line. Thus the child object is still behaving like it is a child of Box or Line (in terms of Layer) while is no longer overlapping that Box or Line.
There are 3 solutions. The simplest answer is never edit pages in different Compatible Browser settings. For people who must (which includes all users of Cool Page 2.1 and earlier which was equivalent of "version 3.0" setting), simply select the child object, choose Copy and Paste from Edit menu. Delete the original child object. This will make a copy of the child object whose parent is the whole page, instead of the Box or Line. An alternative is temporarily change Compatible Browsers to "version 3.0" and drag the child outside of it's parent Box, then switch back to "version 4.0" setting.
Cool Page version 2.5 and later has a new setting in HTML section of Preferences (Edit menu) named Compatible Browsers. When Compatible Browsers is set to "version 3.0"and an object is dragged inside of a Box or Line object, then it will become a child of that Box or Line. In other words, moving the Box or Line will correctly move it's children along with it. However, when Compatible Browsers is then set to "version 4.0" it is possible for such a child object to be dragged outside it's parent Box, yet still be moved with it's parent. See previous answer for more details and a solution.
See previous 2 answers. When a Box or Line has a child object that has been dragged outside of it's borders, then the Box will resist resizing. The solution is to remove child objects as described in previous 2 answers.
What are the *_nn4 files on Preview, Export, Publish?
These are required files, so do not remove them from your Host server. Publish and Preview automatically upload these. Export tells you that these are required files, so do not ignore what Export tells you. These files are automatically used when your web page is viewed in Netscape 4.x browsers. They are versions of your pages specially formatted to work around some bugs in Netscape 4.x.
See also Troubleshooting at http://CoolPageHelp.com. This is usually caused by an error in the custom HTML you added to your page. Delete all the HTML Objects from your page and use Redo to add them back one-at-a-time, Previewing the page after each Redo until you locate the bad HTML.
If you have no HTML Objects on your page, then the other very rare possible cause is a page that is ridiculously overloaded with objects. This can sometimes cause a bug in the browser by overloading the system resources. Such pages are impractical because they take a long time to load and too complex for most visitors to tolerate. Break such pages down into multiple pages and Link them together.
Printing is a browser feature. The browser should be able to print what it can display on screen, but browsers are not perfect. Nothing we can do about that.
In our testing, most pages with text and images will print fine in most browsers. Some browsers have trouble printing Box or Lines and HTML Objects and other special objects. Newer browsers do a better job at printing.
Our HTML Object works correctly. Any problem is caused by bad HTML or misuse of HTML Object. This is discussed in the Help for HTML Object which can be reached by selecting Help button in HTML Object dialog box. We repeat the relevent portion of that Help in next paragraphs:
HTML Object is not for beginners. When you are ready to learn HTML Object, then go to our help site to learn:
Since HTML Object is so powerful, it can also be easily abused and misused. Also since HTML is a vast and complex science, we can not advise you on the use of HTML Object, beyond the help here and at our web site. We encourage you to use the resources at our help site to learn from your fellow Cool Page users. One very important thing to remember is that when you view HTML Objects within Cool Page, all you see on the page is an image saying <HTML>. To see the HTML in action, you must Preview, Export, or Publish your page and view it in the browser. Also it is important to adjust the size of the HTML Objects to the expected size of the HTML in action. Preview in the browser to get an estimate of the size of the HTML in action.
The way professional sites do this is using something called HTTP authentication. HTTP authentication is something done at the Host level, and you should ask your Host for instructions on it.
We plan to add a Javascript form of password protection for pages in upcoming upgrade for Cool Page. Watch for a Scripts section of Objects window in future upgrade of Cool Page!
On a very small percent of the computers in the world, an error box will appear when exiting Cool Page. We have traced this error and it is actually occurring in the system dlls of Windows. This error is harmless and can safely be ignored. This error can be solved by reinstalling Windows, or by installing Cool Page on a virgin Windows computer system. The reason for the error is because of mismatch between dll components of the Windows operating system. Cool Page itself does not cause this mismatch, because Cool Page never alters the system dlls on install, use, or uninstall. However other programs you may install and uninstall, including some of Microsoft's own programs, do in fact alter some of the system dlls, which can sometimes result in mismatched system dlls. As we said, it is safe to ignore this problem. To fix it, reinstall Windows and install Cool Page on virgin Windows computer system.
How to set Events on Text Box?
See also Events at http://CoolPageHelp.com. Events cannot be initiated from a Text Box. But a Text Box can be manipulated by an event from another object such as an invisible object or an image. Do the following to find out or change the Name of a Text Box (e.g. 'Element' number if not renamed), so it can be selected as Target Object of certain Event Types. Select the Text Box, and then choose Object from Edit menu. A tutorial example on this can be found at in page 7 of the Events section at http://coolpagehelp.com.
In the Insert menu at the top of the Cool Page program window is the tool "Insert Invisible Object". It is a transparent image file. Since it is an image, it can have Events just like any other image. It can be resized by dragging it's corners. It can be placed anywhere on the page. Use "Layer" on the Object Toolbar to order it in front of a Text Box. This can create the illusion that the Text Box is initiating an event.
The following is copied directly from the User Manual in Help menu of Cool Page. "Currently Events are only available for selected objects which are images. To make events on other types of objects (e.g. text) or on portions of an image object, place an Invisible Image on top of the desired portion of the object. Then set the Events on the Invisible Image."
Page not correct in Netscape browser?
See also Troubleshooting at http://CoolPageHelp.com. In our past experience, this has always been because of HTML Objects on your page which contain HTML you added which is not compatible with Netscape. Upgrading to Netscape 6.0 will often correct the problem. Else use HTML that is compatible with both browsers.
This is fixed in version 2.65 and later. Version 2.6 can cause an illegal operation message when grouping if the background is also selected.
What are the t.gif files on Preview, Export, Publish?
This is an invisible 1 pixel (1 dot) image used to achieve exact spacing of page elements in some cases. This image is not heavily used if Browser Compatibility is set to version 4 or later. In any case, this image is required for correct formatting of the page. The t.gif image is extremely small and takes an insignificant time to load. No matter how many times it is used on a page, the browser needs only load it once. So do not think this image causes any performance issue at all.
Install DirectX 7 (or later) and just click "Ok" when it looks for dx61eng.exe in the default directory and then click "No" when it asks if you would like to try another directory during the Art-o-matic install to ignore that prompt.
Find the passwords at: http://3Dize.com/try.html
Position the mouse over anything and press F1 key. Position the mouse over a menu item, button, check item, slider, window, object, ... anything! Then read the message at bottom of screen. If you need more help, then press F1 key and you will see help specifically on the item under the mouse.
3D Object imports: .3ds, .x, .3dz, .bmp
3D Object texture: .bmp, .jpg, .ppm
Background image imports: .bmp
Image exports: .bmp, copy/paste
Export (or copy and paste) a series of images from Art-O-Matic to a GIF animation editor, such as the free Microsoft GIF Animator (www.microsoft.com). The images can be easily generated from Art-O-Matic by doing a series of edits and then using Undo/Redo to replay each edit.
Choose Camera... from the Edit menu.
Object has holes or appears inside-out?
Use the "Fix missing surfaces" or "Inside-out surfaces" options respectively.
Click the Artistic button or choose Object from the Edit menu and click Artistic tab.
Click the Artistic button. Check Cartoon and set line colors to black. For each Part, uncheck Lighting and set Color to white. Choose Camera... from the Edit menu and set background color to white.
Turn off the Cartoon style while you are editing and turn it back on to get your final image. Click the Artistic button. Uncheck Cartoon.
Maximize quality of export or copy & paste?
See the Copy Image preferences by selecting Preferences from Edit menu. Read the Art-O-Matic help sections for Copy Image and Export Image.
Adjust light direction precisely?
Turn off Beginner Toolbar from View menu. Click Point Sunlight button. The sunlight will be pointed in the direction the camera is looking. If you need to rotate the camera first, choose New from Window menu to create a temporary Camera window. Then select the Orbit button.
Choose Rotate Object About from the Interactive menu. A blue cylinder will appear on the selected object. This is the axis of rotation. The blue cylinder can be moved. If you drag on the object, the object will rotate around the blue cylinder.