- Setting Selection Preferences
- Making Selections
- Resizing Graphic Elements
- Positioning Graphic Elements
- Flipping, Rotating, and Skewing
- Distorting Graphic Elements
- Modifying Fills and Strokes
- Modifying Shapes: Natural Drawing Tools
- Modifying Shapes: Bzier Tools
- Modifying Primitive-Shape Paths
- Converting Shape Types
- Practice Session
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Resizing Graphic Elements
Flash gives you several ways to resize, or scale, graphic elements. You can scale selected elements interactively on the Stage. You can also set specific scale percentages or dimensions for your element in the Transform panel, the Position and Size section of the Property inspector, and the Info panel.
To resize a graphic element interactively:
- In the Tools panel, from the transform-tools submenu, select the free-transform tool or press Q
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- On the Stage, click the element you want to resize.
Flash selects and highlights the element and places transformation handles on all four sides and at the corners of the element’s bounding box.
- In the Tools panel, select the Scale modifier.
- Position the pointer over a handle.
The pointer changes to a double-headed arrow, indicating the direction in which the element will grow or shrink as you drag the handles inward or outward.
- To resize the graphic element, do one of the following:
- To change the graphic element’s width, click and drag one of the side handles.
- To change the element’s height, click and drag the top or bottom handle.
- To change the size of the element proportionally, click and drag one of the corner handles.
Dragging toward the center of the element reduces it; dragging away enlarges it
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To resize an element via the Transform panel:
- With the Transform panel open, on the Stage select the element you want to resize.
Percentages appear in the Scale Width and Scale Height hot text in the top section of the Transform panel. When you select an element that’s never been resized, width and height are set to 100%.
- To resize the element without changing its aspect ratio (the ratio of width to height), do the following:
- In the top section of the Transform panel, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Clicking the icon toggles between Constrain and Unconstrain modes.
- Use the Scale Width (or Scale Height) hot text to enter a new percentage
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To use a precise value, click the hot text, enter a number in the field that activates, then press Enter. To choose a value interactively, position the pointer over the hot text; when the pointing finger with a double arrow appears, drag left (or down) to lower the value or drag right (or up) to increase the value. Flash previews the changes on the Stage as you drag the hot text’s invisible slider.
In Constrain mode, changing the Scale Width percentage also changes the Scale Height percentage (and vice versa).
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To resize the element and allow the aspect ratio to change, do the following:
- Set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Unconstrain mode (the brokenlink icon).
- Use the Scale Width and Scale Height hot text to enter new percentages.
In Unconstrain mode, entering new values for Scale Width and Scale Height changes those dimensions of the selected element independently.
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To resize an element via the Property inspector:
- With the Property inspector open, in the workspace, select the element you want to resize.
The Position and Size section of the Property inspector contains Width and Height hot text displaying the dimensions of the selected shape’s bounding box.
- To resize the element, do either of the following:
- To preserve the aspect ratio, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Use the Width
or Height hot text to enter a new value
. Click the hot text to enter a precise value; drag the hot text’s invisible slider to choose a value interactively. Changing
the value for one dimension automatically changes the other.
- To allow the aspect ratio to change, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Unconstrain mode (the broken-link icon); use the Width and/or Height hot text to enter new values.
- To preserve the aspect ratio, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Use the Width
or Height hot text to enter a new value
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The Info panel lets you resize a selected element relative to its registration point (the top-left corner of its bounding box) or transformation point. Click the Registration/Transformation Point model to toggle between modes 
. A crosshair in the upper-left corner of the model means the values are relative to the registration point; a circle in the
model’s lower-right corner means the values are relative to the transformation point. Values in the Property inspector are
always relative to the registration point. (For more details, see the sidebar “How Flash Tracks Elements,” later in this chapter.)
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