Vectoring in on bitmaps with Fireworks
Table of Contents
Bitmap fills: Filling vector shapes with bitmapped patterns
Now that you’ve combined bitmaps and vectors on the same canvas, the next step is to combine them within the same graphic. Fireworks comes with a fairly useful library of seamless bitmap fill textures and you can always add your own.
Start by creating a few simple shapes with the vector tools. In the color section of the Tool panel or in the Property inspector, you have the option to create solid, gradient, web-dithered, or pattern fills. If you choose a pattern fill, the library of named bitmap patterns (with handy sample image tiles) appears. Simply choose one you like.
Once you choose a pattern, your vector will have a bitmap fill, and will appear on the canvas with fill handles that allow you to further manipulate the scale and rotation of the pattern fill. Deselect the shape, and the handles disappear; reselect the shape to restore them.
Figure 1: You can further manipulate a vector shape after filling it with a bitmap fill.
Did you happen to notice that the Text tool is in the vector section of the Tool panel? Fireworks treats text as a vector element and you can easily choose a pattern fill for any text box (and then scale, stretch, distort, stroke, and add effects) without destroying the editability of the text.
By the way, there is a Filters menu that works much like the one in Adobe Photoshop®, but if you apply filters from within the Filters box at the right side of the Property inspector, you can remove, adjust, or rearrange the order in which they are applied at any time. Unlike the filters applied from the Filters menu, these are nondestructive filters that won’t actually modify the graphic elements they are being applied to, much like adjustment layers in Photoshop.
