Fireworks Effects pg 3: Production Graphics with Wendy Peck at webreference.com

Fireworks Effects: Fancy Fills

Solid color with Mesh texture. The Fill panel for this sample is shown below.

The top sample shows the Bark pattern included with the Pattern defaults. The lower sample shows a solid color fill with the Bark file added as a Texture.

Adding texture to a fill
To add a texture to your fill, make sure that the object is selected. Choose the texture that you would like to add from the Texture drop-down list in the Fill panel. You will see no change until you change the Amount of Texture. In the sample at the left, I have applied a Mesh Fill to a solid fill, and increased the Amount of Texture to 71%.

Adding a texture to Fireworks fills
You can add a texture from another source or create your own texture to use in Fireworks. Your texture file can be a PNG, GIF, JPG, BMP or TIF. Textures can be color files, but they will be used as grayscale images to work with the fill color.

Copy or save your texture file to the Fireworks\Settings\Textures directory. Once the file is copied, simply select the object you wish to fill, and select Other from the Texture drop-down list. Locate the new texture file in the Locate File window. The texture will be added to the object, and will be added to the drop-down list.

Tip: The Pattern files can also be used as textures. Simply copy the files from the Pattern folder to the Textures folder and follow the instructions above. The Pattern will appear as a texture with the solid fill color.

Adding a Pattern fill
Patterns are similar to textures in that they are added from a separate file. However, Patterns are displayed in color and are not affected by the solid color assigned to an object. As an example, suppose you have a brightly-colored jelly bean background pattern file from a separate source that you would like to use in Fireworks. Simply copy the file to the Fireworks\Settings\Patterns folder. Specify Pattern as the type of fill, select other, and choose your new background file. It will appear in full color as the fill for the selected object.

To make this feature even more exciting, you can add texture to your pattern fills. The sample at the left shows the Brick and Aggregate patterns at the top, and then below with the Scratch texture added at 70%.

Pattern or texture transparency
You can add transparency to the pattern, which is quite different from adding transparency to the entire object. In the sample at the left, a yellow rectangle has been placed behind all objects. The top set of samples shows a a Pattern fill and a Texture fill with the transparency applied to the fill.

The lower set of samples shows the same samples, with the texture transparency removed, but the object transparency set to 50% (in the Objects panel of the window with the Fill panel). Experiment with both settings to gain an understanding of how each type of transparency affects the final look.

We have just taken a very fast tour through the fill panel in Fireworks. Your imagination should be taking flight about now, but there is more.

We haven't added Effects to our fills yet. Read on to see the expanded possibilities.

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Fireworks Effects Tutorial Index

Fireworks Effects: Choosing is the Hard Part
Looking at the Basic Fill and Stroke Tools
Fancy Fills
Adding Live Effects
Enhance Your Designs with Styles