- Setting Selection Preferences
- Making Selections
- Using the Clipboard
- 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
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 (Figure 4.17).
Figure 4.17 The free-transform tool lets you select and scale elements interactively.
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.
Figure 4.18 Activating the free-transform tool's Scale modifier places a set of handles around a selected element. Click and drag the handles to change the size of the element.
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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 Width and 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 and maintain its aspect ratio (the ratio of width to height), do the following:
- In the top section of the Transform panel, set the chain-link icon to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Clicking the icon toggles between modes.
- Use the Width (or Height) hot text to enter a new percentage (Figure 4.19).
Figure 4.19 To resize a selected element, use the Transform panel's Width and Height hot text to enter new percentages. In Constrain mode (the closed-link icon), as you change the percentage of one dimension, Flash automatically updates the other. The Transform panel also lets you enter values for rotating and skewing selected elements.
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 Width percentage also changes the 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 chain-link icon to Unconstrain mode (the broken-link icon).
- Use the Width and Height hot text to enter new percentages.
In Unconstrain mode, entering new values for Width and Height changes those dimensions of the selected element independently.
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- Once you've gotten pleasing proportions for an element by adjusting its width and height independently, choose the Constrain mode to lock in the aspect ratio. Now using the Width or Height hot text scales the element while preserving the new aspect ratio.
- Flash resizes merge-shapes on an absolute scale as long as the shape remains selected. Deselect the shape, and the current width and height become the shape's new 100%. To transform merge-shapes on a relative scale, select the shape and enter new values for Width and/or Height using the Transform panel, then deselect the shape. Select the shape again (Width and Height now show a value of 100%). Enter new percentages for the second transformation.
- Flash always resizes drawing-objects, primitives, text fields, groups, and symbols on an absolute scale (applying the percentage you enter into the panel to the element's original size).
- To undo changes you made to an element's width and height (whether made using the free-transform tool or a panel setting), click the Reset button in the top section of the Transform panel or press Shift-
-Z (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-Z (Windows). For merge-shapes, you must not have deselected the transformed element; for drawing-objects, primitives, text fields (see Chapter 3), groups (see Chapter 5), and symbols (see Chapter 7), you can select the object and click the Reset button anytime to restore the item to its original 100% width and height. - A Remove Transform button appears at the bottom-right corner of the Transform panel; that button undoes all the transformations you applied to the selected item, not just the width and height changes.
- To scale several elements at the same time, select all the elements and then use any of the scaling methods described earlier in this section. When you use the Transform panel, the bounding box that contains the elements scales relative to its center point, and the entire selection grows or shrinks to fit the new box. When you use the free-transform tool, the bounding box scales from the corner opposite to the one you're dragging.
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 chain-link icon to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Use the Width or Height hot text to enter a new percentage (Figure 4.20). 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.
Figure 4.20 The Width and Height hot text in the Position and Size section of the Property inspector displays the dimensions of the bounding box of a selected element. Enter new values to resize the element. In Constrain mode (the closed-link icon), Flash preserves the ratio of width to height. In Unconstrain mode (the broken-link icon), you can enter independent width and height values.
- To allow the aspect ratio to change, set the chain-link icon to Unconstrain mode (the broken-link icon); use the Width and/or Height hot text to enter new percentages.
- To preserve the aspect ratio, set the chain-link icon to Constrain mode (the closed-link icon). Use the Width or Height hot text to enter a new percentage (Figure 4.20). 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.
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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 icon to toggle between modes (Figure 4.21). A crosshair in the upper-left corner of the icon means the values are relative to the registration point; a circle in the icon'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.)
Figure 4.21 You can enter precise dimensions for an element's width and height in the Info panel. The Registration/Transformation Point icon shows whether changes will be relative to the top-left corner of the element's bounding box or to the transformation point. To apply the values you entered in the panel to the selected graphic element, press Enter or click the Stage.
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