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Flash Reference Guide

Aug 22, 2003

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This final section of the Shape tools focuses on color. The Tools bar has two main color controls: the Stroke color and Fill color.

The Stroke color controls the outline to a shape or to a line. Earlier, you changed the color of the lines created with Pencil and Line tools. Pressing the Stroke Color selector gives you 216 web-safe colors. The colors are called web safe because there is a 100% guarantee that they will work on different computer systems, such as Mac and Linux.

The Fill color enables you to pour color in areas, such as the insides of rectangles. As with the Stroke Color selector, you can press the Color selector to choose from other colors.

In addition to the Color selector, you can also use the Color Mixer panel to apply colors to objects. The Color Mixer allows you to add new color to the bottom of the Color Picker. New colors can include bitmap image gradients and non—web-safe colors.

Create a new file and save it as color_mixer.fla.
Open the Color Mixer by selecting Windows, Color Mixer.
The Color Mixer shows you both the Stroke and the Fill color selectors. Choose the Fill Selector. Now choose Solid from the drop-down menu, which allows you to create a solid color.

You can choose your color from either the spectrum of colors in the top grid or by entering the Red, Green, Blue (R, G, B) value. Enter R = 203, G = 138, and B = 68. This is a new color. You can also add an Alpha transparency to the color. Slide the Alpha setting to 75%. Observe that you can see the grid now appearing through the color swatch.

Select the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle. The shape will be filled with the new color. Draw another rectangle on top of the first to see the effect of the transparency. You can keep the new color swatch to use later. To do this, open the Color Swatches panel (Windows, Color Swatches) and move the cursor over the color swatch area until you see the Paint Bucket icon. Click to see that a new swatch of color is added. You can now access this new color any time you want to apply stroke or fill colors.
Now you will create a gradient color with the Color Mixer. There are two types of gradient color: linear and radial. Linear gradients move from one edge to the other. Radial gradients begin in the center of a fill and move outward. In the Color Mixer, select Linear from the drop-down menu. A horizontal line with two color indicators appears. On the left is Black; on the right is White. Select the Black indicator. You can slide it back and forth. The movement of the selector is immediately shown in the preview window. With the Black indicator still selected, change the color by choosing Red from the Color Picker above the preview window. Add the new linear color to the Color Swatches panel.
Draw a square with the Rectangle tool. Fill the shape using the linear gradient. The gradient can be changed to Radial in the Color Mixer. Select the fill from the drop-down style. Change it to Radial, which changes the gradient to appear to be coming from the center of the shape.

Here, our gradient is applied to a shape.

CAUTION

Although there is a final gradient that you can apply by using a bitmap image, I strongly discourage you from using it. Complex images render much more slowly when you use the bitmap gradient.

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