Basics of selecting and editing graphics in Macromedia Flash 8

Posted on July 22, 2011 by admin

In this tutorial, I’ll show you the how to select, and edit graphics in Flash Professional 8.

The tools that I’ll cover in this tutorial are:

Selection Tool

Lasso Tool

Free Transform Tool

Gradient Transform

Eraser Tool

How to use the Selection Tool?

As the name suggest, the Selection Tool is mainly used to Select objects. So, how do you use it?

you select object(s) in an area, by choosing the selection tool, then drag a box to cover objects, then release your mouse.

You can also select a whole object by double clicking on it's fill.

You can select a stroke by clicking it once.

You can also select a fill by clicking it just once.

To move objects, choose the Selection tool, use it to select an object, then drag the object to another position.

You can even bend strokes! Hover your mouse on a stroke, until your mouse looks like the cursor in the image above. Click down, don't release your mouse. Then, bend the stroke.

To change a stroke's angle, click on the edge of a stroke, but don't release your mouse. Drag your mouse to change the angle of the stroke.

You can even bend fills by click-dragging the edge of a fill.

How to use the Lasso Tool?

You can use the Lasso Tool to select irregular shaped graphics with precision. Fact is, you use it like the pencil tool.

1) click on Lasso Tool icon

2) click down, hold your mouse, and you can start drawing out the selection line

3) then release your mouse to select an object

How to use the Free Transform Tool?

You can use the free transform tool to rotate and change the size of objects. The word I’m going to substitute for ‘changing the size of an object’ is ‘resize’.

To rotate objects, hover your mouse at any of the 8 points around the object (after it is selected), until your mouse looks like the cursor in the image above. Click down, don’t release your mouse. Then, drag your mouse. The object’s rotation follows your mouse.

To resize objects, drag any of the 8 points around the object (after it is selected).

The tiny white circly dot is the pivot point. You can drag the point to different locations so that the object selected would be rotated based on the point (refer to image above).Strangely, In Flash 8, this does not apply when resizing objects. You can only resize an object based on it’s pivot point when it is a movieclip or graphic object. This will be discussed in later tutorials.