Fireworks - Magic Wand Tool

In this exercise you will use the Marque, Lasso and Magic Wand tool.

1. Open the jagPartsStart.png file and save it to your Fireworks folder. Open this image with Fireworks.
Your goal is to put the pieces of the car together so the final result will be a finished car.

2. Use the Marque tool to make a selection box around the rear end of the car. At this point you have selected everything within this selection box. If you use the Pointer tool (the black arrow) to select this object now you will end up taking the rear end of the car plus the white background with it. What you want is to select just the silver body of the car. You can use the Magic Wand tool to help with this.

3. Click on the Magic Wand tool and move it inside your box so it is not on the body of the car but on the white space around the car. Hold down the Alt key, how does the cursor change?

4. Pressing the Alt key removes items from what is already selected. When you click the Magic Wand in the white area around the silver body the magic wand selects all of the areas that match the color of the area you clicked on, in this case all of the white is removed from the selection and what remains selected is the body of the car (you can tell it is selected because of the marching ants around that part of the car.

5. What information is displayed in the properties panel when the Magic Wand is selected?
The magic wand allows you to select objects that are similar in color. If there are various shades of color in an object that you want to select then you would increase the tolerance level and a wider variation of the color would be included in the selection. This tool works best when there are clear color contrasts between objects.

6. Now that you have the rear of the car selected (marching ants surround the object) use the Pointer tool (the black arrow) to move the rear end of the car to the top right of the image. You can use the arrow keys to nudge the object if you need to. Use the arrow keys with the shift key to move the object 5 pixels at a time.

7. Select the rest of the car parts and put them in place. When you are finished use the text tool to write: Owned by ...  under the car and put your name in place of the ....

8. Save the image as JagPartsEnd.png in your Fireworks folder.

 

 

Return to Fireworks Assignments Page