Creating Colors in Flash

There are several ways to select color with Flash MX. The Swatches panel displays the 216 Web safe colors and also stores custom mixed colors created by the Mixer panel. To open the Swatches and Mixer panel, from the Windows menu and then Designer Panels and then Swatches (or Mixer.

When working with colors in Flash, you may want to organize the Swatches, Mixer and Fill panels into one window. These three panels are used together very often with colors, and you can save and recall this panel layout.

Adding a New Color to the Swatches Panel

• Click on the Mixer panel tab. Select the color swatch next to the bucket symbol. This is the Fill color.
  
  
  
  Select another color from the drop down swatches menu or by using the sliders from the RGB sliders on the right. These sliders can be switched from RGB (Red, Green, Blue) to HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) or HEX (Hexidecimal) using the left pointing arrow on the Mixer panel.
• Adjust the transparency of the new color with the Alpha text box or slider.
• When the color and transparency is set, select Add Swatch from the right pointing arrow on the Mixer panel.
• Switch to the Swatches panel. The color you created is at the bottom of the color swatches. Now you have a custom swatch palette that you can save and call into other Flash sites.

Saving a Custom Swatches Panel
Select the Swatches panel. Use the pull-down menu from the top right arrow and choose Save Colors. Save your swatches in your chosen directory.

Adding a New Gradient Fill

Let's make a new gradient that has one solid color and one transparent color.

• From the Swatches panel, choose the green radial gradient type. (You can change the type of gradient later.)
  
• From the upper right arrow choose Duplicate Swatch.
  
  
  
  
• To alter a portion of the gradient, select one of the color boxes under the bar that defines the gradient.
  Next, use the "color fill" box above to choose another color.
• Now select the other color and choose a new one. You can change the gradient type from the pull-down menu to create various types of gradients.
• Change the gradient type to Linear.
• Now look at your swatches and you'll see the new gradient you made at the end of the gradients.
• Gradient color swatches can only be used in fills. Transparent fills can only be applied to new objects. They will not replace a fill already there. You will have to select and delete the fill before refilling with the transparent color. This might have to be a two-step process. If there is no stroke on your object, add a temporary one with the inkwell tool. Use that to define the area to be filled, then you can delete the stroke again.

Modifying the gradient's size, position and rotation inside of a filled object.

• Make a shape and fill it with your newly created gradient.
• Select the "fill transform" tool on the Toolbox.
  
  Click on your filled shape on the stage.
  
  A center point appears in the center of the shape and with a Radial fill a circular transform modifier surrounds the shape. The square handle is an adjustment handle. Linear and Bitmap fills will a display a center point and two vertical lines on either side of the shape. On the right line, the square adjustment handle appears.
  
• The Transform Fill handles allow you to change the size, position and rotation of the gradient fill inside the object. When you drag from the center point, the position of the fill will move. The square on the side changes the width, the circle directly below controls scale, and the other circle below that one controls the rotation of the fill. The mouse pointer will change when hovering over one of the handles to indicate the function. Try this with a linear fill to see the difference. In a linear fill, you can modify the same properties as well as skew or slant by dragging from one of the corners.
  

Bitmap Fills

In the Fill panel, choose Bitmap from the Fill Menu. Click on a bitmap that appears in the Fill panel. You can modify a Bitmap fill the same as a Linear fill.

TOP