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Wacom Bamboo Tablet Review

February 21st 2010

The Wacom MTE450 Bamboo  is an A5 small tablet. It comes in black and connects from a mini usb at the top of the tablet to your Mac or PC usb connection. It works with a PC or Mac. I use it with Fireworks and Photoshop. This particular tablet is now under £50.

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Fireworks Bitmap Tools

February 19th 2010

Marquee and Oval Tools These tools allow you to create a selection. Then you can apply things to that selection. Lasso Tool With this tool you are able to make a free hand selection. Magic Wand This will select areas automatically based on pixel colors Pencil and Paint Brush Permanent Markers Rubber Stamp Use the [...]

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Fireworks Vector Tools

February 16th 2010

Fireworks vector tools are tocated in the left hand tool panel. They produce scaleable art. The Pen Tool To create a straight line click and release a start point and an double click to ceate the end point.  To continue the line just single click the points making sure you either double click the last [...]

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Symbols in Fireworks

February 14th 2010

Symbols are master copies of an image or group of images. Each laid down instance is a copy of the master symbol. Updating the master updates all the instances. Ideal for creating your master template with things like the banner, footer and navigation. Symbols are stored in the “Document Library”. They can be dragged in [...]

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Text in Fireworks

February 8th 2010

Text Select the Text tool and type in some sample text.  The text box can then be toggled between Fixed width (wrap) or automatically extend. This is done by double clicking on the small hollow square thumb top left of the text box. Lorum Ipsum Sample Text To use sample text select – Commands/Text/Lorem Ipsum [...]

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Slicing in Fireworks for Web export

February 3rd 2010

  Image Slicing This cuts up a design into small images for use in a Dreamweaver table layout. Use the slice tool to drag out slice elements. Rename the slice layers. In the slice properties set the file Type, Link, Alt Tag and  Target. Set the optimise panel for the prefered export file type. Select [...]

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GIF Animating in Fireworks

February 2nd 2010

Animating with a Gif This creates a simple animation by changing states. Create a simple image. Go to the “States” panel and from the options at the top right select “Duplicate State” Select State 2 then the Layers Tab and change something ie a colour. Now with button State 1/State 2 under the layers panel [...]

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Exporting Web Site Mock ups

February 1st 2010

HTML Export This creates an html prototype for displaying as a web site. – Slice the images only – Make sure all pages are named and button links entered (home.html) – Select File/Export/Html and images (export slices, include areas without slices, put images in subfolder, all others unticked). Default HTML settings can be set in [...]

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Editing Photos in Fireworks

February 1st 2010

How to Make Parts of your Photo’s appear Moving – Using the lasso tool select the part of the image you want the effect applied to. – Select from the top Menu Filters/Motion Blur How to Apply Blends to photo’s like HDR Effects – Create a duplicate copy of your photo on a new layer. [...]

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