Subtitles of the Movie

Continuing my survey of the various Auto Shapes that are available with Fireworks CS4, Next, we have the Measure Tool which you can use to measure various objects. Notice it gives me the width and height and the number of pixels. Beneath that is the Pie Tool. The Pie Tool draws object shapes that appear as pie charts. Using control points you can split the shape into pieces. Let's go ahead and add a fill to this pie chart so we can see it a bit better like so and let's take our control points and break this up into pieces, change the angle here of the pie chart like so. Let's zoom in on this shape here so we can see it a bit better. Take the Selection Tool and notice that there are control points and Alt Opt to drag the segment here. Hold down the Alt Key and let's drag this segment like so. And likewise with this one to add more segments. Next, we have the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Let's double click on my Magnifying Glass, bring this up to a hundred percent and go down now to the Rounded Rectangle Tool. This draws groups that appear as rectangles with rounded corners and using control points you can edit the roundness of all the corners together or the roundness of individual corners. To adjust individual corners you just hold down the Alt Key as the tool tip says there. And notice that I can adjust just one of the corners. I'm holding down the Alt Key. That would be the Option Key on the Mac. And I'm getting errors here. Editing sub-elements of an Auto Shape may cause it to behave unpredictably. Actually I copied it, I made a duplicate there. Let's go ahead and cancel out of that. Next, we have the Smart Polygon but before we do that, let's go ahead and delete all of these Auto Shapes, make some room. The Smart Polygon Tool draws object groups that appear as equilateral polygons with three to 25 sides. Using control points you can resize and rotate, add or remove segments, increase or decrease the number of sides or add an inner polygon to the shape. This is probably one that requires some experimentation since there's quite a number of control points for this one. Again, if you drag your mouse over the control points, this is the sections, the number of sections; 7, 6, 5 sections and so on. Next, we have the Spiral Tool. The Spiral Tool draws object groups that appear as open spirals. Using control points you can edit the number of spiral rotations and you can determine whether the spiral is open or closed like so. And the last item in the list there is the Star Tool. Let me bring up this panel here so you can see the Star Tool there. There's the Star Tool. This Auto Shape draws object groups that appear as stars with any number of points from three to 25 and using control points you can add or remove points and you can adjust the inner and outer angles of the points. Now, in addition to the Auto Shapes that you can apply using the Auto Shape Tools here in the Vector Section of the Tools Panel, Fireworks also has Auto Shapes that are accessible via the Commands Creative Menu such as Adding Arrowheads, Adding a Picture Frame. But the third one here is Adding a Drop Shadow. This adds a shadow beneath the selected object based on the dimensions of that object. Because this shadow is actually an Auto Shape, like all other Auto Shapes it contains control points that you can use to manipulate its appearance. For example, I can adjust the dimensions, the angle, as well as the perspective of this drop shadow. I can adjust the gradient of the drop shadow. Notice I can make it very diffuse or very opaque. The angle of the drop shadow is here. By just using this rubber-band control point to give me different effects. So far more control over changing this Auto Shape Drop Shadow than you will using the filters. There's also a filter that will add a drop shadow. This drop shadow, which is a bit more obvious and probably used more often is in the Properties Inspector. Notice it here under filters. There is a Shadow and Glow Option and one of those there is a Drop Shadow Option right here. But again, you have more control over this drop shadow in terms of changing the actual perspective, as well as the angle and the direction here using the control points of this Auto Shape.