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Adobe Fireworks CS3 Tutorials
Selecting/Transforming/Organizing Objects / Organizing Objects
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Fireworks CS3 / Selecting/Transforming/Organizing Objects / Organizing Objects)
When working with multiple objects in a single document, you can use several techniques to organize these objects including grouping them, arranging them, or aligning them. You can group individual objects to treat them as one object, or to protect each object's relationships to the others in the group. You can arrange objects behind or in front of other objects and this object arrangement is referred to Stacking Order in the Fireworks CS3 documentation. You can align selected objects to an area of the canvas, or to a vertical or horizontal axis. You can even align objects relative to each other. Let me start with Grouping Objects. Group individual selected objects and then manipulate them as if they were a single object. I have six Gemstones here. Let me draw a marquee around each of the six. Actually I have seven now with this Product of the Month text. And now let me Modify, Group these objects so I can treat them as an individual object. I can also use the Sub-selection tool to modify individual elements, or components of this group. Notice that I'm also modifying the text curve on the path there independently of my other objects in the group. I can also resize objects independently, but if I choose the Pointer tool, notice that I still have a group here where all of the objects are related, and then I can also use, for example, the Scale tool to scale all the objects together. Let me go ahead and undo all those changes. You can always ungroup these objects at any time by selecting the group and then choosing from the Main menu, Modify, Ungroup. And now when I select them with the Pointer tool I can treat them individually. Let me now demonstrate the technique of stacking objects within a layer. Fireworks stacks objects based on the order in which they were created, placing the most recently created object on the top of the stack. The stacking order of objects determines how they appear when they overlap. Notice, for example, that this Gem in the lower right-hand corner is on top of all of the other Gems. This Gem here is underneath some Gems and on top of others. You can see the stacking order very clearly if you go to the Layers Panel. Go to Window, and make sure there's a check mark next to Layers, and then open up Panels, off to the right here. Notice that this layer right here has all of these stacked objects in it. Layer 1, you can see that the topmost object in the stack is this one here, so that's why it's on the top. The bottom most bitmap is this one, so notice that it's below all the others. Now at times you'll want to change the stacking order within an individual layer. Remember you can also add another layer and then place these objects in the layer and manipulate the order in which they lay on top of each other, but this is all within one layer, and you can also adjust the stacking order here by selecting the object, and then from the Main menu choosing Modify, Arrange. I can Bring to the Front, Bring Forward, Send Backward, notice that sending backward moves it down the stack one level. You can also arrange and send it all the way to the back, so now this bitmap object is on the bottom of all of the other Gemstones. Likewise I can bring it back up by choosing Arrange, Bring Forward. That brings it up one level. Let's bring it forward another level. Again notice that now it's going to be in front of some of the Gems and behind others; actually it looks like it did not, there we go. Now it's going to be in front of some of the objects. I think it was behind these path objects and that's why it was still underneath some of the Gemstones. Or I can bring it all the way to the front, notice that now it's at the very top of the stack. Notice you can also adjust the stacking order right here in the Layers panel, which is the most visual, easiest way to arrange the stacking order. Now, if more than one object or group is selected, the objects move in front of, or behind, all the unselected objects while maintaining their order relative to one another, so if I select these four here; let's do these, no, let's just do these two, and now let's choose Modify, Arrange, Bring to Front, those two come to the front, but maintain their relative positions to each other, so notice that these two are on top of all of the others, but this Gem here in the upper right-hand corner is still below the one beneath it. Let me now move on to the next movie and demonstrate how to use the Align commands in the Modify menu, and the Align panel to align multiple objects on your Fireworks canvasses.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Fireworks CS3 |
| Author: | James Gonzalez |
| SKU: | 33836 |
| ISBN: | 1-934743-42-9 |
| Release Date: | 2008-01-25 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 93 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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