Adobe Fireworks CS3 Tutorials
Working with Text / Formatting Text pt. 1
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Fireworks CS3 / Working with Text / Formatting Text pt. 1)
Within a text block you can vary all aspects of text including size, font, spacing, leading, baseline shift and much, much more. When you edit text, Fireworks redraws it's stroke, fill, and filter attributes accordingly. I almost always change a text block's attributes using the Properties Inspector. Notice that when I select that text block the Properties Inspector changes, showing me all of the properties that I can modify for that text block, but you can also use the Text menu here at the top of the interface. Notice that I have font Setting, Size, Style, Alignments, the Text Editor, which I'll cover later, Attach to Path, Detach from Path, Orientation, including rotate around the Path, Vertical, Skew vertical, Horizontal, Reverse Direction, Convert to Paths, Check Spelling, and Spelling Setup. However, I normally just use the Properties Inspector. It's very easy to see all of the properties that I can modify for that text block although there are some options here in the Text menu that are not available in the Properties Inspector including Reverse Direction, Attach to Paths, Detach from Paths, Convert to Path, Check Spelling, and the Spelling Setup. To edit text, you'll want to select the text you want to change. You do this by clicking a text block with the Pointer, or the Sub-selection tool. Notice that when I do click anywhere within that text block with either the Pointer or Sub-selection tool, I get a bounding blue rectangle around the text block. That's Fireworks' way of telling me that entire text block has been selected. To select multiple text blocks simultaneously, hold down the Shift key as you select each block. You can also double-click inside of the text block to select individual words, or move your cursor into the block and click, hold down the mouse and drag, to select portions of words or multiple words. Once you have your text selected then make your changes here in the Properties Inspector, or in the Text menu. Let's go ahead and make that italic for example. Let's take these two words and make them bigger. Let me now go through in order the settings here in the Properties Inspector for changing your text starting with the Typeface right here, or the font. Notice that you get a list here, and over to the right it shows you what that font looks like. The fonts that you will see here are those that are installed currently on your computer. Next you have a font size, and again it won't show you the size until you let go of the slider, and then it will show you here on the stage. Then you have your color, color chip. You can either choose a color from the palette, or you can choose the Color Wheel, then either use the color chip here, or you can change the hue, saturation, luminosity values, the Red, Green, Blue RGB values. You can also create custom colors, and then add those custom colors here, like so. You can also use the eyedropper which is sometimes a very handy tool for maybe selecting a color that's currently on your desktop. So that's the blue from my Window's menu there. Notice that to use the eyedropper I just move my mouse off of the color palette there anywhere on my interface. Notice that I need to choose a color from within the Fireworks window. If I move off of the window it converts my mouse back to a pointer and I lose my eyedropper, but I can choose any color that I can see here in the Fireworks interface. Next you have your bold, italic, underline. Again, you'll need to highlight your text before you can apply the property to it. So there I have bold, underline, and italic for this text that was selected. Next you have your Kerning setting, or Range Kerning as it's also referred to. This notice is the spacing, letter spacing here. You can increase or decrease the spacing between the letters in the word. Next you have your leading, or line height. Let me select these three sentences and demonstrate with those three sentences. Notice that I am decreasing the leading, or the line height. I can also do a percentage, or do it in pixels. In general, the rule is you want your leading to be about 125 percent of your typeface size, so if this is, for example, 50, an ideal leading or line-spacing would be 125 percent of that, so let's go ahead now and change this to 125 percent, like so, and that should be around 61 pixels. Let me now move on to the next movie and continue my review of the various ways to modify and work with text properties here in the Properties Inspector.
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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