Adding Gradients and Textures to Shape Fills and Bitmap Selections in Java

Drawing Code 128C in Java Adding Gradients and Textures to Shape Fills and Bitmap Selections

between the two default color sliders If not, skip to Step 12 Note that your cursor becomes an arrow with a small plus sign (+) when you move it between the existing color sliders After you click, a new slider appears, and your cursor becomes a solid black arrow with no stem until you move it off the new slider By default, the color of the new slider is the color in the strip directly above where you clicked

9 Select a color using the eyedropper 10 If desired, move the new color slider left or right to change where the

12 Click the right color slider 13 Select a color using the eyedropper 14 If you want to, move any of the sliders horizontally to adjust where

of different parts of the gradient By default, the opacity of both ends is set to 100 percent (no background shows through) You can add and adjust opacity sliders just as you can color sliders, and they work in more or less the same way

When you click an opacity slider, a pop-up window displays a slider that goes from 0 percent at the left (no gradient shows in front of the background) to 100 percent at the right

After you ve added a gradient fill to your shape, you can rotate, skew, move, and change the width of the gradient See your documentation for details To remove a color slider or opacity slider (you must have at least two colors to make a gradient, of course), click and drag it up out of the gradient popup window When you release the mouse button, the slider will be gone, and you ll have a less complex gradient fill Follow these steps to add a gradient fill to a bitmap selection:

the Bitmap section of the Tools panel In most cases, the Magic Wand tool is the best candidate for this job For more information on selecting parts of image objects, see Book III, 3

4 Select a gradient pattern from the drop-down list 5 Follow Steps 4 through 6 in the steps that describe adding a preset

gradient fill to a vector shape or Steps 4 through 6 in the steps that describe adding a user-defined gradient fill to a vector shape

Adding textures to your fills and bitmap selections is even easier than adding gradients You can even have fills with both a gradient and a texture, though we find that combining gradients and textures often diminishes the graphic power of both in a given image To add a texture to a vector shape, follow these steps:

If the shape is transparent, you ll need to add a color or gradient fill If the shape has a transparent fill (no fill), the Texture list box will be inactive

The drop-down list displays the built-in textures if you have additional textures, select Other from the list and browse to the texture you want to use When you release the mouse button, the texture is applied to the shape fill with the default opacity of 50%

the Texture drop-down list) to set the opacity of the texture A setting of 0 does not show any of the texture, and a setting of 100 shows the texture at full (100 percent) opacity

Fireworks has plenty of useful presets and defaults for the novice user, and enough tweakability to satisfy most any professional Pros will especially appreciate the amount of control Fireworks gives users in the area of color adjustment You can accomplish many of the effects described in this section in two basic ways: Using Live Effects: This is a bit like making everything you look at appear yellow by putting on a pair of sunglasses You re not changing the colors of whatever you re looking at, you re putting something between you and the object to change the appearance of the object Live effects can be turned off and on without changing the pixels that make up the object to which the effects are applied If the object in your Web page design is something that may change later or be repurposed elsewhere, perhaps with different effects applied, you can use Live Effects to apply non-destructive changes to the object in a particular PNG file Live Effects can be applied only to whole objects Using Filters: This method is considered destructive, because it alters the pixels in the bitmap This is like making everything you see yellow by painting everything yellow Though the process is destructive, it is not permanent as long as you have the Undo command available