FW MX Workflow / Selecting Objects
Subtitles of the Movie
Before you can do anything with any object on the canvas, you must first select it. And this applies to virtually everything that appears on the canvas. Including a vector object, path or points, a text block, a slice or a hotspot, an instance, or a bitmap object. To select any object in the canvas, make sure that the pointer tool is selected in the tools palette. And then here you can just click and then move on any object on the canvas you wish to change. And if you notice, as we select various items on the canvas, their properties change in the property inspector. As you import, create, or add new objects on the screen, Fireworks creates a new layer for each object. So you can use the pointer tool to actually select the object on the canvas. And you can see in the layers tab the different changes taking place. You can also just select the object you want by selecting on it, or clicking on it within the layers palette. There are times when one object might obscure another object on a screen. In this example, we have a blue rectangle that is in front or on the top of a red circle. Going to the pointer tool we can select, the select behind tool. And with this selected, we can click once on this object and you can see the red outline of a circle. And clicking it one more time it turns into a psion (?) - that means it is now selected. So we can click and drag this red circle from behind the blue rectangle. Using the pointer tool, you can select multiple objects at the same time. Simply drag the bounding box on the top of the objects that you wish to move. And once they're both selected, you can move them anywhere you want on the screen. The sub-selection tool is used to select, move or modify points on a vector path, or an object that is part of a group. I am going to go ahead and create a polygon, and with the sub-selection tool selected, I can click twice on a point and then drag it out and modify it. The crop tool is used to cutout and remove unwanted areas on the canvas. Simply drag the crop tool out, and with this bounding box selected, you can modify by dragging the corners as you need to. Double clicking and the crop tool will remove all the areas outside the bounding box. The export area tool works in a similar fashion. However, it exports this area to a bitmap image. Simply select the area you wish to have exported, double click, and then the export preview dialogue box appear. In here we can set the format of the image, as well as make various changes. Selecting export and we can save this image right to our hard drive. make various changes. Selecting export and we can save this image right to our hard drive.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Macromedia Fireworks MX |
| Author: | Scott Doucet |
| SKU: | 33407 |
| ISBN: | 1932072179 |
| Release Date: | 2003-01-08 |
| Duration: | 6 hrs / 81 lessons |
| Captions: | For Online University members only |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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