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1.
How do I get a transparent background to dither without the
white halo?
2. How do I draw
an x-thick border around a bitmap image?
3. How do I blend/fade
a photo into white?
4. What's the best
way to import to Flash?
5. How
do I Print Screen with Fireworks?
6. Why
such severe banding in color picker?
7. How
do I create a status bar change on mouseover?
8. How
do I create a mask group?
9. How
do I perform a batch process?
10.
Is there a way to create thumbnails with Fireworks?
Q. I'm exporting
art from a transparent backround, when I bring it in to Dreamweaver2 I
have white halos around everything. How do I get the transparent background
to dither clean without the white halo?
A.The background
color that you specify as transparent in Fireworks must be identical to
the background color on your web page. If an image is used, then it needs
to be placed behind the Fireworks object(s) and it's colors be specified
as transparent in the export preview. Go to: http://www.macromedia.com/support/fireworks/ts/documents/transparent_gif.htm
for a discussion of this issue.
enthusiastically,
mark haynes
macromedia tech support
Q.
Is there an easy way to draw an x-thick border around a bitmap image
in FW2 ? Other than creating a rectangle of the same size?
A. Select
the image. Open the effects panel. From the effects panel, select Outer
Bevel. Set the distance to the desired width of the border. Set the color
to the desired color. Set the Contrast to 0% Set the Softness to 0. The
angle doesn't matter since the Contrast and Softness are set to 0.
enthusiastically,
mark haynes
macromedia tech support
Q.
How do I blend/fade a photo into white?
A. If
you've used alpha channels in other tools, then I believe you'll really
enjoy the options Fireworks offers. We can "mask" any object with another.
The greyscale values of the masking image become transparency values for
the masked group. For instance, try covering your photo with a rectangle.
Give it a black/white gradient fill and adjust its handles with the Paintbucket
Tool as you wish. Select both the rectangle and the photo, and choose
"Mask Group" from the Modify menu. Voila -- the photo will be more transparent
where the rectangle's gradient is lighter, and more opaque where the rectangle's
gradient is darker. Each object can still be indepently selected and edited...
you can use the Paintbucket to adjust the scale of the gradient at any
time. You can even mask groups of objects together, or apply multiple
masks to the same object. To turn these back to separate objects, just
"Ungroup".
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech Support
Q.
When I import pictures from Adobe useing JPEG format it comes out pretty
bad and I have to trace it as a bitmap.. tracing always takes a long time
and doesn't make the pics look all to great.. Does Fireworks offer a better
way to import images into Flash? A different file type perhaps? Or is
it Freehand 8 that's better for Flash?
A. JPEG
is lossy compressed, which means that information is thrown away to make
the file size smaller. It's suitable for only one thing, and that's exporting
an image for the Web. If you want to transfer images between applications,
use PNG, which uses lossless compression. Transparencies in PNG format
will also show up in Flash.
Simon White
Macromedia Evangelist
mailto:simon@mediafear.com Mediafear
http://www.mediafear.com
Q.
Using Photoshop, I am able to CTRL + PrintScreen whatever is on my
desktop and paste it into a new image. In Fireworks, this doesn't seem
to work. It seems like something is pasted, but I can't see the actual
print screen. Any ideas why?
A. That's
a known issue on NT machines. It has to do with how Firework interprets
the screen image from the NT system as opaque white. John has been able
to get it to work by the following steps:
Preface: make sure your monitor is at 32bit colordepth.
1. Create a printscreen by pressing CTRL+PrintScreen (I use CTRL+ALT+PrintScreen
to get specific windows in my screen shots)
2. Open Fireworks. Select File>New. The new document will be sized to
the clipboard image's size and there will be some activity in the processing
area of the status bar.
3. Paste (CTRL+V) a white image appears.
4. Choose File>Export and set the document format to a TIFF at 24 bit
depth. Set the Matte setting to None. The image should appear in the Preview
area.
5. Export the file.
Alternatively, you can paste to the Windows Paint program and then save
or copy and paste into Fireworks from there.
enthusiastically,
mark haynes
macromedia tech support
Q.
I recently upgraded to Fireworks 2 and for the most part am very pleased.
There is one annoying thing about it though. In the color mixer window,
the colored rectangle is severely 'banded' and when I open up the image
in the first tutorial re: optimizing jpegs, that image Ad.jpg is very
banded also, but bringing it up in a browser, it looks very nice. What
gives?
A. By
default, the color picker is showing the Web safe palette of 216 colors.
To get the other palettes, press Ctrl (Command for Macs) or Shift and
click on the Color Mixer preview - Fireworks cycles through each of the
palettes.
Joseph Lowery Author, Dreamweaver Bible http://www.idest.com/dreamweaver/
Q.My
problem is that I´ve created a rollover and want to display a status bar
message in Netscape when the mouse is over my image. I am sure Fireworks
2 has the ability to do this, because it generates a javascript for changing
the status bar. But where can I enter my text for the status bar in FW2???
A.In order
to create a status message follow these steps:
1 draw a hotspot or slice
2 go to the behavior panel and press the "+" button
3 select Display Status Message
4 enter your message in the dialog box
5 hit the OK button
6. You should now see your display behavior appear in the behavior panel
If you would like to modify your message, double click on the display
status message that appears in the behavior panel.
Eric Wolff
Macromedia SQA
Q. How do I create a
mask group? Where the photo gradually dissolves in the background.
A. Boy are you lucky. Fireworks 2 makes
this real easy and real fun. What you want to do is create a Mask Group
set to display as "Top Object's Image." Here are the steps:
Place your photo and then draw a rectangle that completely covers it.
Fill this rectangle with a linear gradient that goes from black to white.
Select both photo and rectangle and choose Insert> Mask Group. The photo
will now fade off where the rectangle was white. Select the Paint Bucket
and move the "handles" for the gradient to change the position of the
fade as well as it's length. The supreme advantage of FW 2 is that the
gradient can be adjust and changed dynamically. It's a regular object.
The new Mask Group is one of the greatest new features in FW. Best,
Sandee Cohen
Q. Is there a way to
take a whole directory full of image files (varying resolutions, sizes,
aspect ratios) and batch process to fit in a certain-sized box? The resizing
would need to be figured from whichever axis is longer. I just got through
doing 196 of these by hand (actually using PS actions, one each for vert
and horiz) and was wondering if there's an easier way.
A. Yes, you can use the File>Batch Process
to process an entire directory of files, and when you change the Export
settings, set the Scaling to 'Scale to Fit Area' and set the max height
and width of the box you want all of the images to fit into. They'll keep
their aspect ratios within the max area defined.
Hope this helps, Ryan Miller Macromedia Tech Support
Q. Is there a way to
create thumbnails with Fireworks?
A. You can use File>Batch Process and
set the Export action to Scale to Fit Area and set the max width and height
of the images you are processing.
Hope this helps, Ryan Miller Macromedia Tech Support