Subtitles of the Movie

Let's now go into more detail, some of the more important of the Workspace elements starting with the Toolbar over here to the left. Toolbar contains all the tools you will need for creating and editing artwork. Each of the main tools has an associated keyboard shortcut. Which is usually displayed when you roll over the tools, the Sub Selection tool, keyboard shortcut is A, selection is V, Free Transform is Q, 3D Rotation tool, W and so on. New in CS4 is you have a lot more options for how you want to configure your toolbar. Traditionally its either been on one column or two column tool and notice you can now extend this out to multiple columns and fewer or more rows here so this is a bit more flexible. Usually I like to leave my toolbar in the two column mode like this Ð stretch that down. Now you will notice that some of the tools have a little arrow, a black arrow in that lower right hand corner. This indicates that there are additional tools underneath the top tool. Free Transform and Gradient Transform tools are together. The 3D Rotation is on top of the 3D Translation tool. Here in the Pen Tool you have a number of tools underneath that. Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point, Convert Anchor Point. And the Rectangle tool is probably the one that causes the most confusion at least initially because underneath that is the Oval Tool and you have the Rectangle Primitive Tool, the Oval Primitive Tool and the Polystar Tool. First thing you want to do is familiarize yourself with the names of these tools. Again, by simply rolling your mouse over them. We have the Pencil Tool, the Brush Tool, Deco-Art Tool, and a new tool, Bone Tool in CS4 as well as the Paint Bucket Tool and the Ink Bottle Tool underneath that. Eye-Dropper. Eraser Tool, Hand Tool, Stroke Color, Fill Color and then underneath here you will notice that there are some additional options depending on which tool you select. For example with the Line Tool you will notice that there are some Object Drawing Mode Tool and a Snapped Object Tool. Same with the Rectangle Oval and the Primitive tools here as well as the Polystar Tool. You have this Drawing Object or Object Drawing Mode which I will cover in a later chapter. Eraser Tool has perhaps the most interesting collection of sub-tools down here including a mode. You have Erase Normal, Erase Fills, Erase Lines, Erase Selected Fills and Erase Inside. I will be covering each of those a little bit later. But here I just wanted to point out that there are in fact additional options here. A Faucet option and then the eraser shape of course, you have all these different shapes for your eraser. That is also in addition to setting this as a free floating window and changing the configuration of the toolbar. You can also dock the toolbar. The default is over here to the left. But you can also undock it and then when I drag it down here you might see a little blue outline. And now that is docked down below or I can dock it over here to the right. There. A little bit tricky at first, this docking set up. And I tend to just have a free-floating Tool Panel or I dock it over to the left so you will see in most of the movies of this tutorial that it's either free-floating or moved over to the left. You also remember, have these various work spaces and depending on the Workspace, the Tool Panel there will be in different locations. There is Animator, this is the Debug obviously for Debugging you don't need the Tool Panel so sometimes you will see that it will disappear. Also got Designer. Designer Layout. It's over here in the upper left hand corner in kind of a three row multi-column configuration. So it can be a little bit confusing at first. Here is the Developer Workspace. And again, in this Workspace, slightly difference up here at the top in a one row multi-column configuration. And then lastly you have Essentials, which is over here to the right. So again, I will probably be using mostly the Classic Workspace, that works also best for those of you that maybe have Ð are familiar with older versions of Flash and I will leave my toolbar kind of floating over here to the left, up or down. I will be covering many of these specific tools in the next section of the tutorial including how to create lines and strokes and fills and more details about specific tools here that you will use more often. But let me now move on to the next movie in review in more detail. The Properties Inspector, which is a real essential Workspace element in Flash CS4.