Monday, August 14, 2006

Making Reflections

Making reflections in Fireworks is very easy. First of all convert to a symbol the shape you want to reflect (press F8). I'll explain why you should do this step later. I started off with this text and converted it to a symbol.

Reflected Text in Fireworks


Copy and paste the symbol (ctrl-c, ctrl-v), then flip the copy vertically and move it down to get something like this:

Reflected Text in Fireworks


Fade out the copy by clicking Commands > Creative > Fade Image and choose the 4th option. You should now have this:

Using Fireworks to Make Reflections


The reflection is not subtle enough so I reduced the opacity to 25 (you might decide on a different value):
Using Fireworks to Make Reflections


To add some realism, I added a shadow to the original text by drawing an ellipse at its feet:

Reflection Made in Fireworks Now with a Shadow


To make the shadow effect, I added a feather of 10 to the ellipse and reduced its opacity to 20.


Note: the reason we made the initial object into a symbol is so that if you change the symbols attributes, these changes are reflected (no wordplay intended!) in the reflection. If you don't use a symbol, any changes that you make to the original shape will need to be applied to the reflection as well. Que pena!

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