Unit 4. Drawing and Working with Color (II)

Tools Bar. Options

Some Tools have special options that eases and strengthens their use. In order to access these utilities, sometimes it is not enough to click on the corresponding Tool. The way to access to this Submenus consists in clicking on the line or on the drawn object.

Then a submenu will appear (or it will highlight if it is already present) as:

Adjusting Objects : It is used to make objects to "fit" with others, i.e. if it is possible, to intersect its borders, then objects seem to be "grouped".

Smoothening: It softens the straight segments in less rigid lines.

Straightening: It does the inverse work. It converts the rounded segments in more straight ones.

Color Mixer Panel:

The Color Mixer Panel as its name indicates is used to create our own colors and to select colors that we like.

In order to select a color, just click on the tabs that are close to the icons of the Pen Tools or Paint Bucket. (If we want to modify the color of a border, we press on the tab that is closer to the icon of the Pencil Tool and if we want to modify a filling, we click on the tab that is closer to the Paint Bucket Tool). By doing this, a Panel with many colors will appear. Select one of them. It also allows to introduce the code of the color according to the standard established by HTML.

The filling type that we'll apply to the created objects also can be determined.

We can create differentes types of Fills

Solid Fill: It consists in a filling formed by a single color.

Linear Gradient: It is a special filling type, a color does a gradient until it converts into another one. It can shade from top to bottom or from one side to the other.

Radial Gradient: It is identical to the previous one, but the gradient shade performs a circular pattern.

Bitmap: It lets you put an image existing in the movie as filling (you can even import it in that precise moment).

To learn how to create a transparent (or semi-transparent) color, do the Exercise Create Transparent Color

Color Swatches Panel

The Color Swatches Panel allows to see the arranged colors in a quick and easy way, solid colors (only one color) as well as linear gradients or radial gradients. Moreover, when we create a color with the Color Mixer Panel, we can add it to our set of swatches by Adding Swatch (that is in a menu, which is open in the right top of the Color Mixer Panel). Once the color is added, it will be in our set of swatches, and we can quickly access to it each time while working in our movie.

Every movie has its own set of swatches and each time we open it we can use the swatches we had the last time we worked in the movie.

  Exercises of the Unit 4.

  Unit 4 Test