Adjusting Color Information and More with Filters in Java

Make Code39 in Java Adjusting Color Information and More with Filters

Follow these steps to sharpen an image or selection, using the Unsharp Mask filter: 1 Select a graphic or part of a graphic For more information on selecting image objects or parts of image objects, see Book III, 3 2 Choose Filters Sharpen Unsharp Mask The Unsharp Mask dialog box pops up 3 Click and drag the Sharpen Amount slider The slider goes from 1 percent (not very much) to 500 percent (very strong contrast) 4 Click and drag the Pixel Radius slider The slider goes from 01 (hardly noticeable) to 2500 (very strong effect) 5 Click and drag the Threshold slider The slider goes from 0 (change all pixels) to 255 (change no pixels) 6 Click OK

The Convert to Alpha filter makes your selection transparent The lighter the pixel, the more transparent it becomes White pixels, for example, seem to disappear, allowing the background to show through fully Black pixels, on the other hand, remain black and completely opaque To convert a selection to Alpha, follow these simple steps: 1 Select a graphic or part of a graphic For more information on selecting image objects or parts of image objects, see Book III, 3 2 Choose Filters Other Convert to Alpha The selection is converted 3 Click anywhere on the canvas or use the key command Ctrl+D to deselect your selection The Find Edges filter makes a photograph look like a line drawing by greatly simplifying the color information in the image

To use the Find Edges filter, just follow these steps: 1 Select a graphic or part of a graphic For more information on selecting image objects or parts of image objects, see Book III, 3 2 Choose Filters Other Find Edges The selection takes on the appearance of a line drawing 3 Click anywhere on the canvas or use the key command Ctrl+D to deselect your selection

You can add several kinds of shadows to objects in Fireworks 8 Two of the most useful shadows are Drop-shadows: Create the illusion that text or objects are floating above the surface of the canvas Shadow auto shapes: New to Fireworks 8, you can adjust shadow auto shapes as if changing the position of the light source that s making the text or object cast a shadow To add a drop-shadow to an object, simply select the object and click the + button next to Filters in the Properties panel Then choose Shadow and Glow Drop Shadow You can edit various properties of the drop-shadow by clicking the Information button (the white, italic i in a blue circle in the Filters section of the Properties panel) To add a shadow auto shape to an object, select the object and choose Commands Creative Add Shadow You can edit the offsets and width of the auto shape using the new Auto Shape Properties panel

Fireworks lets you use third-party filters as plug-ins, as the included lite versions of Alien Skin s Eye Candy 4000 (Bevel Boss, Marble, and Motion Trail) and Splat (Edges) demonstrate These versions of the third-party software don t have all the features of the full version (hence the lite in the names), though grayed-out menu options give you a sense of what the full-featured version of the software can do (and the Buy Now button in the filter window makes getting the full-featured version pretty easy!) Because these lite versions aren t officially part of Fireworks, we don t cover them in this book You can find information about the fully-functioning versions of these filters at wwwalienskincom

Managing layers Using layers to mask images Using the Web layer Working with objects Managing frames Using frames to create rollovers and animated GIFs

verything that you put on your canvas in Fireworks 8 everything that you draw, type, paste, or import exists in a layer And every layer exists in a frame Initially, you may think this concept seems simple enough, but it s more involved than it first appears Frames can share layers, and a single layer can contain a single object (a bitmap, shape, or text) or multiple objects A large file can actually get pretty complex, where you can have dozens of bitmaps, shapes, and text blocks Layers give you a way to organize your Fireworks PNG image so that you can easily turn groups of objects on or off (make the groups of objects visible or hide them), put objects on top of or beneath other objects, lock groups of objects so you can t modify them, and find objects easily Frames, on the other hand, offer a way to organize layers so you can export multiple states of buttons (different versions of the button, such as those versions that appear when the user rolls over or clicks the button) and animated GIFs quickly and easily The canvas is at the bottom of the stack of layers It s not really a layer itself you can t expand or collapse it, make it visible or invisible, locked or unlocked, or delete it The Web Layer, the repository for slices and hotspots, is always the top layer, as you can see in Figure 5-1 You create slices in the Web Layer in order to cut your page design into individual images After you slice images, you can optimize, export, and place them in HTML pages, where you can hyperlink them You create hotspots in the Web Layer to make images that you can export for