The Toolbox

     

The Toolbox is covered in Chapter 3 because so many of its features are common to Fireworks and/or FreeHand. Figure 3.1 shows the Toolbox. Still, there are a couple of features that are unique to the Flash Toolbox, and those are covered here.

The Subselection, Line, Text, Pen, Oval, Rectangle, Paint Bucket, and Eyedropper tools, as well as the View Section and the Colors Section of the Toolbox, are all covered in Chapter 3, page 23 .


Arrow Tool

When the Arrow tool is selected, you'll notice that three modifiers are displayed in the Options section at the bottom of the Toolbox. The first, which looks like a magnet, is the Snap to Objects modifier. (There are two other ways to get to the same function: on the main menu, via View, Snapping, Snap to Objects; and on the main toolbar at the top of the screen, with the magnet icon.) Snapping makes it easy to position objects at a particular distance from one another (the "snap tolerance"), or exactly touching at edges, centers, or bounding boxes.

NOTE

The bounding box is the smallest rectangular area that completely encloses the shape.


graphics/new_icon.jpg

There are separate horizontal and vertical snap tolerances (see Figure 15.6), as well as a snap tolerance from the edge of the Stage. These distances are configured on the Snap Align dialog (View, Snapping, Edit Snap Align), shown in Figure 15.7. Dotted lines appear when you are at the snap tolerance (whether or not snapping is on), as shown in Figure 15.6, making it easy to align objects.


Figure 15.6. The small box in the upper right (dark lines) is being dragged toward the larger box in the lower left. The lighter box in the upper right is the current position of the dragged box. The dotted lines indicate that the snap tolerance has been reached. These snap tolerances are configured in Figure 15.7.
graphics/15fig06.jpg

Figure 15.7. The Snap Align dialog. The horizontal snap tolerance is set to 50, the vertical snap tolerance to 10. See Figure 15.6 to see these snap tolerances in action.

graphics/15fig07.jpg


When all or part of an object is selected on the Stage, the other modifiers, Smooth and Straighten, can be activated. Select a line or part of a shape outline and then click these modifiers to either add points to smooth a shape or remove points to straighten.

Lasso Tool

For Lasso Tool basics, see "Selecting Objects," page 29 , in Chapter 3.


The Lasso tool has three modifiers. The top two are the Magic Wand and Magic Wand Properties. They allow you to select portions of bitmaps that have been broken apart. Clicking on a bitmap selects pixels according to color range. Continue clicking to add to the selection. The settings include threshold, which determines how sensitive the wand is to color differences in adjacent pixels. Lower numbers result in more precise selections, whereas higher numbers include a broader range of colors. Smoothing determines how much the borders of selections will be smoothed. The last modifier is Polygon mode, which draws lasso selections with straight edges.

Brush Tool

The Brush tool modifiers enable you to select a brush mode, size , and shape, and to lock a fill color. The Brush Mode modifier allows you to paint normally over strokes and fills. It can also be used like a stencil, to protect parts of objects. The Paint Fills modifier paints fills and empty sections of the Stage, leaving strokes unchanged. Paint Behind protects objects and paints only empty parts of the Stage. Paint Selection allows you to restrict the Paint tool to just the fill of an object that has been selected on the Stage ”an automatic "keep within the lines" command. Unlike simply selecting a filled area and applying a new fill, which changes the whole fill, Paint Selection enables you to paint just part of the fill with a new color. The final Brush Mode modifier is Paint Inside, which allows you to paint roughly over an object and apply the color just to the object's fill, not to the stroke or the Stage.

If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet, the Pressure modifier varies the brush stroke according to how hard you press as you draw. The harder you press, the wider the stroke.

Free Transform Tool

Flash is the only Studio MX 2004 program with a Free Transform tool, which allows you to apply transformations individually or in combination to objects, groups, instances, and text blocks. Just select an object on the Stage and click the Free Transform tool. A bounding box appears around your selected object and, as you move your mouse around, the various transform methods are indicated by changes in the pointer.

The modifiers include Rotate and Skew, Scale, Distort, and Envelope. Distort simulates perspective by allowing you to click and drag the corner or edge handles on the bounding box, realigning the adjoining edges, as shown in Figure 15.8.

Figure 15.8. The Distort modifier reshapes and realigns shapes , simulating perspective.

graphics/15fig08.gif


As you can see in Figure 15.9, Envelope lets you warp and distort selected objects. Selections are contained within an envelope , and you can pull or push Bezier handles to warp the envelope contents. You can even convert the warping into individual keyframes so that it occurs incrementally over time.

Figure 15.9. The Envelope modifier warps and distorts objects.

graphics/15fig09.gif


Fill Transform Tool

The Fill Transform tool, also unique to Flash, enables you to adjust gradient and bitmap fills. When you click on a gradient or bitmap fill, the bounding box and center of the fill are indicated by circles and boxes that can be dragged. If you hold the pointer over one of these handles, the pointer changes to indicate your editing options. You can reshape, rotate, scale, and skew bitmaps and gradients. You can even tile a bitmap fill.

Ink Bottle Tool

Flash is unique in using the Ink Bottle tool to modify an existing stroke. When you use this tool in conjunction with the Property inspector, you can edit stroke color, thickness , and style. You also can change any of these settings and click an existing stroke to implement changes.

Eraser Tool

Using the Eraser tool, you can erase objects in whole or part. Simply dragging the Eraser tool erases everything along its path . The Eraser Mode modifiers allow you to specify parameters, such as strokes and fills on the same layer (Erase Normal), fills only (Erase Fills), strokes only (Erase Lines), or only fills that have been selected (Erase Selected Fills). Using Erase Inside, you can start erasing a fill, and as long as you hold the mouse button down, only that one fill will be erased; other objects may seem to be erased, but they will reappear when you release the mouse button. The Faucet modifier removes strokes or fills in their entirety with a single click. The Eraser Shape modifier specifies a shape and size for the Eraser.

CAUTION

The Faucet pointer has an irregular shape. The drop of water, not the faucet itself, makes selections. When you're working with small objects, position the drop of water over what you want to select.




Using Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio MX 2004
ISBN: 0789730421
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 339

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