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Adobe flash professional cs6 tools free
Additions include basic 3D object manipulation, inverse kinematics bonesa adobe flash professional cs6 tools free properties panel, professoonal Deco and Spray brush tools, motion presets and further expansions to ActionScript 3. It is used to move the Stage around fgee Pasteboard by dragging the Stage. The program can create multimedia content using both raster and vector images both. It is grouped with the Library panel. Free Download for Mac. Adobe Captivate is used to create highly engaging, interactive eLearning content.
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For more details, see Other Flash Panels. The workspace changes back to the original Essentials layout, even though you did your best to mess it up. As shown in Figure , when you use the Essentials workspace, the Flash window is divvied up into three main work areas: the stage upper left , the timeline lower left , and the panels dock right. Like most computer programs, Flash gives you menus to interact with your documents.
In traditional fashion, Windows menus appear at the top of the program window, while Mac menus are always at the very top of the screen. The commands on these menus list every way you can interact with your Flash file, from creating a new file—as shown on Starting Flash —to editing it, saving it, and controlling how it appears on your screen. Using these menu choices, you can perform basic tasks like opening, saving, and printing your Flash files; cutting and pasting artwork or text; viewing your project in different ways; choosing which toolbars to view; getting help; and more.
If you prefer, you can also drag down to the option you want. Let go of the mouse button to activate the option. Figure shows you what the File menu looks like.
Most of the time, you see the same menus at the top of the screen, but occasionally they change. For example, when you use the Debugger to troubleshoot ActionScript programs, Flash hides some of the menus not related to debugging. For a quick reference to all the menu options, see Appendix B. As the name implies, the stage is usually the center of attention.
The stage is also your playback arena; when you run a completed animation—to see if it needs tweaking—the animation appears on the stage. Figure shows a project with an animation under construction. The stage is where you draw the pictures that will eventually become your animation. The work area light gray gives you a handy place to put graphic elements while you figure out how you want to arrange them on the stage. Here a text box is being dragged from the work area back to center stage.
The work area is the technical name for the gray area surrounding the stage, although many Flashionados call it the backstage. This work area serves as a prep zone where you can place graphic elements before you move them to the stage, and as a temporary holding pen for elements you want to move off the stage briefly as you reposition things.
If you decide you need to rearrange these elements, you can temporarily drag one of the circles off the stage. The stage always starts out with a white background, which becomes the background color for your animation. When you go to the theater, the stage changes over time—actors come and go, songs are sung, scenery changes, and the lights shine and fade.
Flash animations or movies are organized into chunks of time called frames. Each little box in the timeline represents a frame or a point in time. You use the playhead , shown in Figure , to select a specific frame. So when the playhead is positioned at Frame 10, the stage shows what the audience sees at that point in time. The playhead is a red box that appears in the timeline; here the playhead is set to Frame You can drag the playhead to any point in the timeline to select a single frame.
The timeline is laid out from left to right, starting with Frame 1. Simply put, you build Flash animations by choosing a frame with the playhead and then arranging the objects on the stage the way you want them.
Most simple animations play from Frame 1 through to the end of the movie, but Flash gives you ways to start and stop the animation and control how fast it runs—that is, how many frames per second fps are displayed.
Using some ActionScript magic, you can control the order in which the frames are displayed. The first time you run Flash, the timeline appears automatically, but occasionally you want to hide the timeline—perhaps to reduce screen clutter while you concentrate on your artwork. If you followed the little exercise on A Tour of the Flash Workspace , you know you can put panels and toolbars almost anywhere onscreen.
However, if you use the Essentials workspace, you start off with a few frequently used panels and toolbars docked neatly on the right side of the program window. Flash has toolbars, panels, palettes, and windows.
Sometimes collapsed panels look like toolbars and open up when clicked—like the frequently used Tools panel. Panels are great, but they take up precious real estate. As you work, you can hide certain tools to get a better view of your artwork.
You can always get them back by choosing their names from the Window menu. Move a panel. Just click and drag the tab or top of the panel to a new location. Panels can float anywhere on your monitor, or dock on an edge of the Flash program window as in the Essentials workspace. For more details on docking and floating, see the box on Docked vs.
Expand or collapse a panel. Click the double-triangle button at the top of a panel to expand or collapse it. Expanded panels take up more real estate, but they also give you more details and often have word labels for the tools and settings. Show or hide a panel.
Use the Window menu to show and hide individual panels. Checkmarks appear next to the panels that are shown. Close a floating panel. On the Mac, click the X in the upper-left corner. Show or hide all panels. The F4 key works like a toggle, hiding or showing all the panels and toolbars.
Use it when you want to quickly reduce screen clutter and focus on your artwork. Separate or combine tabbed panels. Click and drag the name on a tab to separate it from a group of tabbed panels. To add a tab to a group, just drag it into place. Reset the panel workspace. A docked toolbar or panel appears attached to some part of the workspace window, while a floating toolbar or panel is one you can reposition by dragging. Whether you want to display toolbars and panels as docked or floating is a matter of personal choice.
If you constantly need to click something on a toolbar—which means it needs to be in full view at all times—docked works best. You may notice a color change Figure , especially as you begin to move the panel. The actual visual effect is different on Mac and Windows computers, but the mechanics work the same.
Drag the panel away from the edge of the workspace window and release the mouse button. Flash displays the panel where you dropped it. You can reposition it anywhere you like simply by dragging it again.
To dock a floating panel, simply reverse the procedure: Drag the floating panel to the edge of the workspace window and let go of the mouse button. You see a line or a shadow when the panel is ready to dock. When you let go, Flash docks the panel automatically.
Bottom: The checkmarks on the menu show when a toolbar is turned on. When you reposition a floating toolbar, Flash remembers where you put it. If, later on, you hide the toolbar—or exit Flash and run it again—your toolbars appear exactly as you left them. Strictly speaking, Flash has only three toolbars: Main, Controller, and Edit.
Everything else is a panel, even if it looks suspiciously like a toolbar. Figure shows all three toolbars. Main Windows only. The Main toolbar gives you one-click basic operations, like opening an existing Flash file, creating a new file, and cutting and pasting sections of your drawing. With Flash Professional CS6, the Controller is a little obsolete, because now the same buttons appear below the timeline.
Edit bar. Using the options here, you can change your view of the stage, zooming in and out, as well as edit scenes named groups of frames and symbols reusable drawings. The Edit bar is a little different from the other toolbars in that it remains fixed to the stage. The Tools panel is unique. In the Essentials workspace, the Tools panel appears along the right side of the Flash program window. There are no text labels, just a series of icons. However, if you need a hint, just hold your mouse over one of the tools, and a tooltip shows the name of the tool.
Most animations start with a single drawing. And to draw something in Flash, you need drawing tools: pens, pencils, brushes, colors, erasers, and so on. Chapter 2 shows you how to use these tools to create a simple drawing; this section gives you a quick overview of the six sections of the Tools panel, each of which focuses on a slightly different kind of drawing tool or optional feature.
At the top of the Tools panel are the tools you need to create and modify a Flash drawing. For example, you might use the Pen tool to start a sketch, the Paint Bucket or Ink Bottle to apply color, and the Eraser to clean up mistakes.
The Tools panel groups tools by different drawing chores. Selection and Transform tools are at the top, followed by Drawing tools. Next are the IK Bones tool and the Color tools. The View tools are for zooming and panning. The Color tools include two swatches, one for strokes and one for fills. If you like, you can drag the docked Tools panel away from the edge of the workspace and turn it into a floating panel. In either of these situations, you can use the tools Flash displays in the View section of the Tools panel to zoom in, zoom out, and pan around the stage.
Each dot is a pixel. You can use these tools to choose a color from the Color palette before you click one of the drawing icons to begin drawing or afterward to change the colors, as discussed in Chapter 2. Flash applies that color to the stage as you draw. For example, when you select the Zoom tool from the View section of the Tools panel, the Options section displays an Enlarge icon and a Reduce icon that you can use to change the way the Zoom tool works Figure On the Tools panel, when you click each tool, the Options section shows you buttons that let you modify that particular tool.
In many ways, the Properties panel is Command Central as you work with your animation, because it gathers all the pertinent details for the objects you work with and displays them in one place. Select an object, and the Properties panel displays all of its properties and settings. The Properties panel usually appears when you open a new document.
For example, if you select a text field, the Properties panel lists the typeface, font size, and text color. You also see information on the paragraph settings, like the margins and line spacing. Here, because a text field is selected, the Properties panel gives you options you can use to change the typeface, font size, font color, and paragraph settings.
Click the triangular expand and collapse buttons to show and hide details in the Properties panel. Fortunately, the various panels and tools work consistently. For example, many objects have settings that determine their onscreen positions and define their width and height dimensions. These common settings usually appear at the top of the Properties panel, and you set them the same way for most kinds of objects.
The Library panel Figure is a place to store objects you want to use more than once. This trick saves time and ensures consistency to boot. In the upper-right corner of most panels is an Options menu button. When you click this button, a menu of options appears—different options for each panel.
For example, the Color Swatch panel lets you add and delete color swatches. Storing simple images as reusable symbols in the Library panel does more than just save you time: It saves you file size, too.
Using the Library panel you see here, you can preview symbols, add them to the stage, and easily add symbols you created in one Flash document to another. For now, Table gives a thumbnail description and notes the page where the panel is described in detail. Table Flash Panels and their uses in order as they appear on the Window menu. Technically, the timeline is just another panel. You can move, hide, expand, and collapse the timeline just as you would any other panel.
See Frame-by-Frame Animation for more. A powerful tool used to create and control animation effects. See A Tour of the Motion Editor for more. Perhaps the most frequently used panel of all—it holds drawing, selecting, and coloring tools. Everything that appears on the stage has properties that define its appearance or characteristics.
Even the stage has properties, like width, height, and background color. See Color Tools for more. Holds graphics, symbols, and entire movies that you want to reuse.
See Symbols and Instances for more. When you want to share buttons, classes, or sounds among several different Flash documents, use the common libraries. See the tip on Tip for more. Serves up dozens of predesigned animations.
See Applying Motion Presets for more. You use this panel to write ActionScript code. The Actions panel provides a window for code, a reference tool for the programming language, and a visual display for the object-oriented nature of the code.
Specific bits of code perform timeline tricks, load or unload graphics, handle audiovisual tasks, and program buttons. See the box on Create an Event Handler in a Snap for more. The earlier version of ActionScript version 2. Messages explain the location of an error and provide hints as to what went wrong. See Setting and Working with Breakpoints for more.
Additional panels to help you find errors in your ActionScript programs. See Analyzing Code with the Debugger for more. The display uses a tree structure to show the relationship of the elements. Another place to debug ActionScript programs.
The Output panel is used to display text messages at certain points as a program runs. See Using the Output Panel and trace Statement for more.
Lets you align and arrange graphic elements on the stage. See Aligning Objects with the Align Tools for more. Lets you select and apply colors to graphic elements. See Advanced Color and Fills for more. Provides details about objects, like their location and dimensions. The Info panel also keeps track of the cursor location and the color immediately under the cursor. Colors and gradients that you can apply to graphic elements.
You can create your own swatches for colors you want to reuse. See Specifying Colors for ActionScript for more. Lets you change the size, shape, and position of graphic elements on the stage. You can even use the Transform panel to reposition or rotate objects in 3-D space. See Transforming Objects for more. Holds predesigned components you can use in your Flash projects. See Reversing Frames in the Timeline for more. Provides compatibility with older animations. Flash CS6 displays component properties in the Properties panel.
Earlier versions of Flash used the Component Inspector. See the box on Learning the Parameters for more. Tools that help you ensure that vision- and hearing-impaired folks can enjoy the animations you create using Flash.
See the box on Why Accessibility Matters. Lets you backtrack or undo specific steps in your work. Flash keeps track of every little thing you do to a file, starting with the time you created it or the last time you opened it.
You can also use this panel to save a series of commands you want to reuse later. Helps you organize and manage your scenes. You can break long Flash animations into separate scenes, as described on Working with Scenes. Need to create an animation or application that works in different languages? Using the Strings panel, you can create and manage multi-language versions of the text.
Used only with ActionScript 2. The term accessibility refers to how easy it is for folks with physical or developmental challenges like low or no vision to understand or interact with your animation. But there is help. Thanks to U. If you ignore accessibility, you eliminate a whole audience who might otherwise benefit from your content.
For the tutorials in this section, you need a Flash animation to practice on. Other Missing CD files for this book are named the same way. You can download all the exercise files in a single ZIP file or you can grab them chapter by chapter.
The Missing CD also includes links to all the web-based resources mentioned in this book. When the Open dialog box appears, navigate to the file you just downloaded, and then click Open. When you open a document, the Welcome screen disappears. Flash shows you the animation on the stage, surrounded by the usual timeline, toolbars, and panels. After you open the exercise in Flash, your screen should look like this.
At the bottom, the timeline shows two layers—one named background and the other, wheel. The stage shows surprise, surprise a background and a wheel. To the right, the Properties panel displays the properties for the document.
The Properties panel appears docked to the right side of the stage when you open a new document. As shown in Figure , it shows the Property settings for objects. Initially, it shows the properties for the Flash document itself. Click another object, such as the wheel, and you see its properties.
Why are properties so important? They give you an extremely accurate description of objects. If you need to precisely define a color or the dimensions of an object, the Properties panel is the tool to use.
It not only reports the details, but it also gives you the tools to make changes, as shown in this little exercise:. At the top of the Tools panel, click the Selection tool solid arrow. The Properties panel shows the properties for your Flash document. Left: When you first open a document, the Properties panel shows property settings for the document.
Right: Select the wheel in the document, and you see its properties. Click the triangle buttons to expand and collapse the subpanels. Flash Window Components. The Flash window is divided into four main components. They are. Stage and Pasteboard.
Tools panel. Property Inspector. The white rectangle area in the middle of your workspace is called the Stage. All the animations, objects and scenes for a Flash movie are created, edited, placed and played back in the stage.
As with a theater stage, the Flash Stage is the area that viewers see when a movie is playing. The term movie refers to Flash-created movies. It contains the text, images, audio and video that appear on the screen. You can resize the Stage. To change the view of the Stage, Zoom in and out. To help in positing the items on the Stage, you can use the grid, guides and rulers.
The gray area surrounding the Stage in Flash is the Pasteboard. You can create and edit objects in the pasteboard also but they will not be visible in the final movie.
Only the graphical objects kept inside the stage are visible in the final movie. The Stage reflects the actual size of the movie you create in Flash when it is published. The timeline is one of the most important components of Flash. It is located below the Stage. The Timeline also contains Frames and Layers. Flash movies measure time in frames. Frames are the discrete, small slices of time.
You can change the content on the Flash Stage for different frames. A red vertical line in the Timeline is called the Playhead. When the movie plays, the playhead moves through the frames in the Timeline. Layers help you organize the artwork in your movie. Each layer can contain a different image that appears on the Flash Stage. You can draw and edit objects on one layer without affecting objects on another layer of Timeline.
You can hide, lock, or show the contents of layers by clicking the dots in the layer under the layer option icons. Timeline is the record of every frame, layer and scene that makes up a movie. The Flash Tools panel includes the tools you need to create, select, or edit graphics on the Stage.
The double arrows at the top of the Tools panel are used to collapse the panel to icon-only view, or to expand the panel and see all the tools.
By default, the toolbar is on the right side of your screen. The single capital letter in parentheses indicate the keyboard shortcuts to select those tools. Using the Tools Panel. The Tools panel contains a collection of tools. When you move the mouse pointer on a tool, its name appears.
Some tools in the Tools panel have additional options that allow you to modify their use. For example, the Brush tool has options for changing the size and shape of the brush head. When the tool is selected, the options are available in the Options area of the Tools panel. Selection Tool V. This tool is used to select an object or parts of an object, such as the stroke or fill, and to reshape and reposition objects. The options for the Selection tool are Snap to Objects aligns objects , Smooth smooths lines , and Straighten straightens lines.
Subselection Tool A. This tool is used to select, drag, and reshape an object. We know that vector graphics are composed of lines and curves each of which is a segment connected by anchor points. When you select an object with this tool, it displays the anchor points and allows you to use them to edit the object.
Free Transform Tool Q. It is used to rotate, scale, skew, and distort objects. Gradient Transform Tool F. It is used to transform a gradient fill by adjusting the size, direction, or center of the fill. The Free and Gradient Transform tools are grouped within one icon on the Tools panel.
To see the menu containing grouped tools, click and hold the tool icon until the menu opens. It is used to create 3D effects by rotating movie clips in 3D space on the Stage. It is used to create 3D effects by moving movie clips in 3D space on the Stage. Lasso Tool L. It is used to select objects or parts of objects by drawing a freehand. Pen Tool P. It is used to draw lines and curves by creating a series of dots, known as anchor points, that are automatically connected.
Other tools used to add, delete, and convert the anchor points created by the Pen tool are grouped with the Pen tool. Text Tool T. It is used to create and edit text. Line Tool N. It is used to draw straight lines. Rectangle Tool R.
It is used to draw rectangular shapes. Press and hold Shift key to draw a perfect square. Oval Tool O. It is used to draw oval shapes. Press and hold Shift key to draw a perfect circle. Primitive Rectangle and Oval R. It is used to draw objects with properties, such as corner radius or inner radius, that can be changed using the Properties panel.
PolyStar Tool. It is used to draw polygons and stars. Pencil Tool Y. It is used to draw freehand lines and shapes. The Pencil Mode option displays a menu with the following commands:. Straighten draws straight lines , Smooth draws smooth curved lines , and Ink draws freehand with no modification. Brush Tool B. It is used to draw paint with brush-like strokes. Spray Brush Tool.
Flash Tools | Different Types and Properties of Flash Tools
The current version of ActionScript is 3. You can create a shortcut or drag the file to the taskbar for quicker starting. Save a File. The gray area surrounding the Stage in Flash is the Pasteboard.
