Modifying Simple Graphics in Adobe Flash Professional CS6
One way to modify graphics in Adobe Flash Professional CS6 is to select one or more shapes and edit their attributes (such as color, size, and location) in the Property inspector or in other appropriate panels.
You can also modify the path that creates the shape of an element. When you perform some operations—such as straightening lines, adjusting Bézier curves, and assigning new attributes—the element must be selected. When you perform others, such as reshaping a line segment or curve with the selection tool, the element must be deselected. A few operations let you edit the element whether it’s selected or not, such as changing the fill color using the paint bucket tool.
In this chapter, you’ll use the selection, lasso, and subselection tools to select and modify the elements you learned to make in Chapter 2. You’ll modify elements’ attributes using the Property inspector and other panels.
Setting Selection Preferences
You have two basic ways to make a selection in Flash: click an element directly, or enclose all or part of an element with a selection outline. You can set preferences to gain more control over these methods.
To set selection methods
- From the Flash menu (OS X) or the Edit menu (Win), choose Preferences.
- From the Category list, choose General .
- In the Selection section, select one of the following checkboxes:
Shift Select With Shift Select active (Flash’s default setting), you must Shift-click with the selection or subselection tool to add items to a selection. With Shift Select inactive, you need only click additional items to add them to the current selection.
Contact-Sensitive Selection and Lasso Tools With Contact-Sensitive Selection active (the default), Flash selects an entire element when a selection outline merely touches the element—such as a graphic-object or text field, a grouped shape, or a symbol instance. With Contact-Sensitive Selection inactive, the selection outline must fully enclose an item to select it. (Whether contact sensitivity is on or off, a selection outline always selects just the enclosed portion of a merge-shape.)
- Click OK.