Fireworks - Lesson1:Introduction

Graphics are a big part of any web page, printed media and multimedia projects. Whether it is a logo, a picture or a diagram, most web pages make use of graphical images. Fireworks is a graphics editor, it allows you to make and manipulate images in some pretty amazing ways. Most professionals use Adobe Photoshop so why are you learning Fireworks? Because most photo editing programs do many of the same things the concepts and many of the tools in both programs are either the same or similar. Thus the skills you learn in this class are easily transferable to other graphic programs.

Obtain a Studio MX 2004 text and start on Lesson 1: Bitmap Editing found on page 3 of the Fireworks section. Answer the following questions as you read and work through the lesson. Be sure to perform any of the activities described.

1. Explain the difference between a bitmap image and a vector image.

2. Look at Figure 1-2. The tools in this panel are grouped together under what six headings?

3. What information is displayed in the New Document window?

4. When working with the custom color box what is the function of the eye dropper?

5. What information is displayed in the Properties panel about the canvas?
NOTE: The properties panel is one of the most important panels used in Fireworks and it should always be open at the bottom of your canvas.

6. List five tools that are used to manipulate bitmap images.

7. When using the Marquee tool what does the shift key allow you to do?

8. What does the Alt key allow you to do with the marquee tool?

9. What keys can you use to nudge the selection window (the ring of marching ants)?

10. When using the pointer to choose a selection, what does the Ctrl + Alt key combination do?

11. Describe how to use the crop tool.

Stop at the end of page 16. Be sure to save your feathered picture so you can show it to your instructor for teacher check.

Practice:
Open one of your Sequoia pictures (one that you took) or download an image from the web and crop and feather the image. Change the canvas color and duplicate the cropped image so there are two on the same canvas.

Once you have finished these questions and the practice exercises show your cropped and feathered images to the instructor for teacher check.