Live effects and transparency

Live raster effects

If you use Fireworks you are already familiar with live effects: adding special effects that can be changed at will at any time as long as you save the original png file. This is possible because the effects do not modify the original object: they are applied as properties to the object. Now FreeHand gives you that capability as well, providing live raster effects like those found in Fireworks.

Because live raster effects are bitmaps (not the object they effect, but the live effects them selves) they look best if rendered at the resolution of the output device (for screen or print). You can set the resolution in the document settings.You can also set it to a low screen resolution number while drawing to speed things up and set it to the higher print resolution before output.

Also you can set resolution settings for individual objects in the options menu of the object panel. If it is different than document resolution settings, uncheck "Use Document Resolution Settings".

To add an effect, select the fill or stroke you want to add the effect to, and then click the Add Effects button.

The effect appears as a sub-entry of the stroke or fill it it applied to.

To add another effect, click the add effects button again. You can add more effects to the same attribute, or add effects to a different one. I added a drop shadow to the green star tiled fill.

Transparency effects

With transparency effects a fill, stroke or even parts of one can appear transparent, or partially transparent. In the object panel the transparency effects menu allows you to add basic transparency, where the entire object (or a single attribute) is transparent; feather transparency which makes the edges gradually transparent, or gradient transparency, which lets you fade the transparency according to a grayscale gradient mask. This is a big step over FH10's lens effects!

Live vector effects

Live vector effects work like the live raster effects in that they are applied via the object panel, they can be applied to a single attribute or a group of attributes, and they do not modify the actual object to which they are applied. Some of these effects are very similar to their counterparts in the Xtras, except those actually modify the object. By using live vector effects instead, you can revert to the original object at any time.

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