COLOR

FILL & STROKE

There are several ways to deal with color in Fireworks. Select the fill and stroke colors before drawing something, or select an object and change it’s fill or stroke using one of the following options:

You can open the color mixer and/or swatches panel from the Window menu. In the mixer, click on the pencil icon to choose a stroke color, or the paint bucket to choose a fill color from the spectrum, or type in R, G, and B values.

In the swatches panel, click the color you want to use. In this case, however, the stroke or fill icon in the tool palette needs to be “indented” (active) in order to determine whether you’re changing the fill or stroke. In which case...

...You can click on the bucket or pencil icon in the tools palette to access the swatches panel. Click on the desired stroke or fill color from there.

Or, select a stroke and/or fill color from the Properties panel.

Finally, you can select a color for a fill or stroke (depending on which is active in the tool palette) from a bitmap image, or from another file all together using the eyedropper tool.

To select a color from another file, open it and make sure both your current document and the one containing the color(s) you want to use are visible on your desktop.

Select the object whose color you want to change (1.) and then click on the fill color box in the property inspector (2.).

Once the swatches panel pops up, move the eyedropper icon over to the document with the desired color and click on the color you want (3.).

Use the stroke portion of the properties panel to add interesting edges to your objects: select a stroke category from the pop-up menu, a color from the color box, and use the sliders to adjust the width and intensity of the stroke. You can also apply a texture to a stroke.

TEXTURE

All vector objects are drawn with a texture set to 0% by default. To make a texture visible, select the object and use the texture slider in the properties panel. Use the texture pop-up menu to select the texture you want.

Checking the “transparent” box sets the texture from color-to-white, to color-to-transparent, allowing any color underneath to show through.

TRANSPARENCY

All objects can be less than opaque. Use the effects section of the properties panel to set the level of transparency of a selected object.

You can also set transparency using the layers panel.

GRADIENTS

Fill options include solid colors, textures, patterns, and gradients. While there are a lot of steps to creating and modifying a gradient fill, it’s really quite easy and intuitive.

Select the object you want to assign a gradient fill. Then click on the fill pop-up menu (not the color swatch box). Choose “gradient” and you get a major selection of gradient options to choose from. (You can also do this before drawing anything to set the gradient ahead of time.)

Another dialog box pops up, where you can change the type of gradient, or edit the colors. Click the edit button for yet another dialog box that allows you to change the colors, and add additional ones.

Add more colors to your gradient by clicking underneath the color bar to create a new tab. Then click on the tab to select the color from the swatches panel.

Once you’ve finished, just click away from the panels a couple of times to close them.

Adjusting a gradient is also easy. Once you’ve assigned a gradient to an object, you ‘ll note that there are control points that dictate its direction, the center point, and length.

Adjust the direction by clicking and dragging the end point.

Adjust the length by moving the endpoint closer to or farther away from the center point.

Move the center point by clicking and dragging it to another location.

LIVE EFFECTS

One of the coolest things in Fireworks is the effects portion of the properties panel. You can create beveled edges and drop shadows, blur things, and a lot more.

Without going into major detail about what each effect does, here’s how to apply them, and delete them if you don’t like the results.

Select an object and then click on the effect “+” button and drag to the effect you’d like to try.

You’ll get a dialog box that lets you adjust the different aspects of the effect. When you like what you’ve done, just click away from the dialog box to close it. You’ll notice that the effect has been added to the list below the effects portion of the properties panel.

Keep clicking on the “+” button to add additional effects.

If you want to eliminate one, click on it in the list and then click on the “-” button.

To edit an effect, double click it in the list.

SAVING STYLES

If you’ve created an object with various fills, strokes, and effects that you’d like to use again, you can save it as a style using the styles panel. (Open it from the Window menu.)

Select the object, and then click on the “add style” icon at the bottom of the style panel. You can then select the attributes of the selected object to include in the saved style.

Use the styles options menu to save/export styles to use again in other files.