Subtitles of the Movie

Fireworks CS3 live filters, formerly known as live effects, are enhancements that you can apply to vector objects, bitmap images and text. I've applied some filters to each type of Fireworks object here. There's a variety of text that I've applied a drop shadow, a bevel, noise, a blur filter and a combination of filters. Here's a vector object, a button, that I've applied an outer bevel filter. This glow text, actually it was text. I've flattened it so that now it's a bitmap and I can show that it's a bitmap by erasing a part of it. Notice that I can't erase the text unless I first flatten it. Now live filters include bevels and embossing, solid shadows, drop shadows and glows, color correction and blurring, as well as sharpening. You applies the filters to selected objects directly from the properties inspector and notice that there's a filters section here with a drop-down menu and the filters are organized in groups, options, same style, all on, all off, locate plug-ins, adjust color filters, the bevel and emboss, inner bevel insert and emboss, outer bevel and raised emboss, the blur filters, the Gaussian blur, motion, radial, and zoom blur, noise, other filters, convert to alpha find edges, the shadows and glows including drop shadows, glow, inner glow inner shadow and solid shadow, as well as the sharpen filters. And then the last group is Photoshop live effects. After you apply a live filter, you can change its options any time or rearrange the order of the filters to experiment with a combined filter. Notice that here I click on my drop shadow text. There's a drop shadow filter here in the filters section of the properties inspector. I double click on it and I get the dialog here that lets me adjust the settings, including the angle, the amount of blur, strength, the displacement. Let's go ahead and displace this a little bit less than what I had so it's closer, the drop shadow is closer to the text. I can also change the color as well as add a knockout drop shadow. That's kind of a nice effect there. Likewise with my vector object I can double click on this drop shadow and change its settings here. Actually that's an outer bevel for that vector image. Let's change that from a flat outer bevel to a smooth outer bevel. Now here I have a combination of effects applied to this text. Let's go ahead and change the order from the invert and drag that up so that it's at the top of the order. And now let's take the outer bevel and drag that down and so you can see that by rearranging the order of my effects I can achieve a different look of the combination. Now, you can remove temporarily or permanently these filters by selecting it and then clicking on the checkmark right next to the name of the filter. That will temporarily disable that filter without permanently removing it. Notice that now those objects have no filters on them. If at any time I want to go back and re-add the filter, just click on the X, the red X there to turn the filter back on. To permanently remove the filter, select it from the list and then click on the remove filter or delete the current selected live filter button and that will permanently remove that filter. Some filters now listed among the Fireworks live filters, such as auto levels, Gaussian blur and unsharp mask were once available only as irreversible plug-ins or filters. In addition to these you can also add third-party plug-ins to be used in Fireworks as these live filters if you prefer. You can also use some of these filters in the traditional manner using filters menu here at the top of the interface. Notice that you have the adjust color filters here, auto levels, brightness, contrast, curves, hue, saturation, invert and levels, as well as the blur filters, the noise filter, other filters and the sharpen filters. Notice that not all of the filters that you have available here in the properties inspector are up there in the filters menu, such as bevel and emboss and the shadow and glow filters there. So there you have a quick overview of the various live filters you can directly apply to your bitmap, vector and text elements on the Fireworks canvas and how to edit these filters using the properties inspector. I'm sure you'll find these image effects a valuable part of your graphics work in Fireworks.