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, selected graphic elements. You can interactively scale one or more selected items on the Stage. You can also set specific scale percentages or dimensions for a selected item 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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The free-transform tool lets you select and transform elements interactively. The tool’s modifiers (in the Options section of the Tools panel) govern the types of changes you can make to a selected object. With no modifiers selected, you can scale, rotate, and skew; the pointer changes to an appropriate icon as it interacts with different areas of a selected object on the Stage. - Select a graphic element on the Stage. The element highlights, and transformation handles appear at the sides and 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
. - To resize the element, do one of the following:
- To change the element’s width and/or height, drag a side handle, top handle, and/or bottom handle.
- To scale the element proportionally, drag a corner handle.
Dragging toward the center of the element reduces it, while dragging away enlarges it
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In Scale mode, the free-transform tool can only resize a selected object. Choosing Scale mode prevents you from accidentally rotating or skewing a selected object when dragging a transformation handle.
To resize an element via the Transform panel
- With the Transform panel open, select an element on the Stage.
Scale Width and Scale Height percentages appear in hot-text controls in the top section of the Transform panel. When you select an element that hasn’t been resized, width and height are set to 100 percent.
- To resize the element without changing its aspect ratio (the proportion of width to height), do the following:
- In the top section of the Transform panel, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Constrain mode
. Clicking the icon toggles between Constrain and Unconstrain modes. - Use the Scale Width or Scale Height hot-text control to enter a new percentage
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To resize a selected element, use the Transform panel’s Scale Width and Scale Height hot-text controls to enter new percentages. In Constrain mode (top), when 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.
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
. - Use the Scale Width and/or Scale Height hot-text controls to enter new percentages.
In Unconstrain mode, you can enter different values for Scale Width and Scale Height.
To resize an element using the Property inspector
- With the Property inspector open, select an element on the Stage.
The Position and Size section of the Property inspector contains Width and Height hot-text controls displaying the dimensions of the selected shape’s bounding box.
- To resize the element, do one of the following:
- To preserve the aspect ratio, set the Constrain/Unconstrain modifier to Constrain mode . Use the Width or Height hot-text control to enter a new value
. 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 ; use the Width and/or Height hot-text controls to enter new values.
When you select a drawing-object (top), the Position and Size section of the Property inspector displays the dimensions of that element’s bounding box (bottom). To resize the element, use the Width and/or Height hot-text controls to enter new values. In Constrain mode , Flash preserves the ratio of width to height. In Unconstrain mode , you can enter independent width and height values.