Adobe Fireworks CS3 Tutorials
Using Live Filters / Applying Drop Shadow & Blur Filters
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Fireworks CS3 / Using Live Filters / Applying Drop Shadow & Blur Filters)
In Fireworks CS3, it's easy to apply solid shadows, drop shadows, inner shadows, and glows to your objects. You can specify the angle of the shadow to simulate the angle of the light source shining on the object to create the drop shadow. You can also modify the throw of the shadow, the blurriness, and much, much more. So let me demonstrate In this movie, how to apply shadows and glows in Fireworks CS3. To apply a solid shadow, select the object that you want to apply the shadow to, and then here in the Properties Inspector, open up the Add Live Filters menu, by clicking on the plus button, and then choose from the drop down menu Shadow and Glow, and then Drop Shadow. That will give you this default properties, which is generally pretty good, but notice you can change the distance of the shadow from the object, the color of the shadow, the softness of the shadow, notice that it gets softer as I increase that value from four, which is the default, to 20. Here's the Angle Setting. You'll probably want to keep the angle setting to the default here at 315. That'll give you a throw down and to the right, which is standard on most computer operating systems, including Mac and Windows. You also have an option here for Knock Out, which knocks out the object, in this case changing it to white. It gives you some interesting effects. Notice that you can apply drop shadows to any object here in Fireworks. Let's go ahead and apply an object to this geek graphic right here. Open up my Filters menu and choose Shadow and Glow, Drop Shadow, and there's my drop shadow on my icon. Let's go ahead and turn off that drop shadow by selecting the drop shadow that was applied, and then clicking on the Delete the Current Selected Live Filter. Let's now add an inner shadow. With the object selected, click on the plus icon there, Shadow and Glow, Inner Shadow, and again, I have the same settings here: distance, it's not really showing me very much there. I can, notice, also double-click on that Live Filter after I've added it to get my properties here again. Let's change this to a red color, and then we can see that inner shadow a little bit easier. Let's go with perhaps a little blue there, and let's adjust the distance, and the angle. I can either, for the angle, type in a new angle, or click and use this wheel here to move my angle of the inner shadow. I have the Knock Out option as well, which gives an interesting effect there. That's probably maybe a little bit easier to see this distance modifier, what that does. This is another one of those tools I use quite a bit. To really master it you'll want to experiment around with it. Next we come to the Glow Filter. I oftentimes will use glows on my buttons, especially the roll over states of my buttons, so let's select this button, and then here in the Live Filters section of the Properties Inspector, choose Shadow and Glow. The first one here is Simple Glow, and that gives you a colored glow here, but you can change the color from the color chip. You can also change the halo effect, more or less halo, as well as the strength, or opacity. Zero is completely transparent, 100 percent is completely opaque, so generally you'd want to choose a value in between those two extremes. Next here you have your softness, much the same way that the softness setting worked in the drop shadow, and then your offset. That gives an interesting kind of halo effect there when I increase the offset to 18. Let me go ahead now and remove all of the filters that I've added to that button. Now let's add an inner glow to the button. I can still see a glow on there. There we go. Let's select the text. I think it's the text that I've selected. Let's remove the glow there, and now let me demonstrate the Inner Glow filter. This is going to be found under the Shadow and Glow section. Inner Glow. Let's go ahead and change the color so we can see the glow a little bit better, and let's increase the offset, so we can see that a little bit better, that's now offset, I think it's off the button. If we decrease it, notice that that just goes red on the inner glow, an offset of zero, and there's more of a yellow color if I offset it all the way off 30 pixels I get that yellow color because that's the color of the text. If I remove the text, let's click on the button, and now let's add an inner glow to just the button. That maybe is a little bit better demonstration of what the inner glow does. That's a black inner glow with an offset of zero. Increasing the offset moves it off the button. That probably is the best example of the inner glow. Finally we come to the Solid Shadow. Let me go ahead and select my multi-media Web authoring text, remove the inner shadow that I've applied to that, and with that object still selected, choose Shadow and Glow, Solid Shadow on the bottom. This does quite a bit different effect than the drop shadow. Here you have an angle, a distance, a solid color option. Let's go ahead and change the angle, and let's change the distance. An interesting effect. Let's choose the solid color option and let's change the solid color to something lighter. That's perhaps a better example of what that solid shadow is doing there, and now let's decrease the distance. It gives you a little bit better idea of this Live Filter. Perhaps a gray color will work best in this example. Let's go a little bit lighter. That's probably too light, but you get the idea here. This is another one of those tools where you'll want to experiment to get the best results. I'm decreasing the distance there. That's a little bit too low. That's probably more of what the effect that I'm looking for. Once you're satisfied with your settings, click OK, and there you have your solid shadow. So there you have the various filters underneath the Shadow and Glow category. Let me now move on to the next movie and demonstrate how to work with Photoshop layer effects.
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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