Adobe Fireworks CS3 Tutorials
Working with Text / Working with Text
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Fireworks CS3 / Working with Text / Working with Text)
Much like this Web page right here, most websites are composed primarily of text. Fireworks CS3 has many text features, typically reserved for sophisticated desktop publishing applications. You can create text in a variety of fonts and sizes, and adjust the kerning, spacing, color, leading, baseline shift, and much more, primarily using the Properties Inspector here. Notice if I add some text here, text formatting is done here in the Properties Inspector. First thing, notice that I can draw out a box of text and then format that text, move the text around. If I double-click on the text, notice the Properties Inspector lets me change the typeface, the size, and color; formatting such as bold, italic, and underline. Some of the more sophisticated editing features, such as kerning and spacing are down here. Notice the kerning adjustment, or the distance, or the spacing between individual letters. If I have multiple lines of text, let's go ahead and add a new line of text here. I can adjust the line spacing, or leading is another term for this. Notice that I have a percentage or a pixel setting to really get a precise leading, or line spacing adjustment there. Notice that here I can also set the text orientation: Horizontal left to right, Horizontal right to left. I'm not sure why I'd need that, but also Vertical, left to right and Vertical right to left. Then you have your Alignment options: Center. Let's go ahead and open up this text box here, like so, and you can see the Alignment options better. That's full justification there, so it's giving you even alignment on both the left and the right. You've also got the Stretch Alignment, which stretches. Notice that this stretches the text out to give you the full justification that you need. Then we come to the Filter section. Fireworks makes it a snap to add Filter effects to your text such as drop shadows or bevels. There's the standard drop shadow there. Notice that there is the Effects filter. You can also delete very easily those filters. Here is an inner bevel on that text. Let's go ahead and make that text a bit bigger you can see that bevel a little bit better, as well as Blur, Noise. Some of these also have options for the amount of effect you want to apply. So there is the Noise effect. Notice that I can apply multiple filters to the text. Lucky for me, Fireworks also has an excellent spell-checker. Let's select this text block and choose from the Main menu, Text, Check Spelling. Fireworks has finished checking this selection. Let's continue checking the rest of the selection, correct the entire document. Let's go ahead and notice that you can edit the text at any time, even after you apply Live filters, so let's misspell that word and let's run the Spell Checker again. And this is the dialog that you get. Word found a problem. You can change the text to something else, or it provides suggestions here, that's my favorite part, because it'll provide suggestions on what you think you're trying to spell. I can Add this to my Personal Dictionary if it's a technical term. I can Ignore the misspelling, I can Ignore All instances of that misspelling. I can change; let's go ahead and change that to taxation. Fireworks is finished checking the selection. Let's go ahead and cancel that, and there is the update that the Spell Checker provided for me. And when you import an Adobe Photoshop document containing text, this text will also remain editable. Fireworks handles missing fonts upon import by asking you to select a substitute font, or allowing you to import text as a Static Image. I have an example of a project that was done on a Mac, and I don't have the correct fonts, so let's go ahead and, and there's the warning that you get: Text in this document uses fonts not available on your system. Would you like to maintain the look of the missing fonts until the text is edited, or replace the missing fonts? So your options are to maintain appearance, or replace fonts. So if you choose replace fonts, you have the opportunity to choose an alternate font. In this case, a font that's available here on the PC versus the one that was on my Macintosh that I don't have here on my PC. So, let's go ahead and change this to Black Oak, click OK, and this looks very much different to me. You can see that this text right here looks terrible because it's really substituting a font that's not appropriate, but you do have the option of bringing it in and maintaining appearance. Let's choose the Maintain Appearance option and this is now a little bit closer to the way that it looked on the Macintosh. There is still some problems right here with the font sizes, but it looks better. In conclusion, because Web pages are still composed primarily of text, you'll need a Graphics Editor that gives you a great deal of control over the appearance and file sizes of these graphics, and Fireworks' simple to use, but powerful text editing and creation tools fills this need exceptionally well.
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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