User Guide

CHAPTER 3

112

Building a Composition

Using the Composition window

Use the Composition window to preview the composition and animate its contents

manually. Move a layer by dragging it; scale a layer by dragging its handle. The Compo-

sition window contains a number of features and controls to help you work with layers.

You can also change the background color of the composition.

A. Rulers Used to align layers in the composition window. The ruler scale is in pixels. See

“Using rulers and guides” on page 56.

B. Magniﬁcation menu button Used to choose a new magniﬁcation from the menu. See

“Changing magniﬁcation in windows” on page 54. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option

(Mac OS) as you press the mouse button to view composition information.

C. Safe zones button Toggles between viewing the title-safe and action-safe zones and

viewing just the image. To display the animator grid, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option

(Mac OS) and click this button. See “Viewing safe zones and grids” on page 54.

D. Take- and display-snapshot icons Captures a screen image of the window. Snapshots

are not saved to disk, and only the most recent snapshot can be viewed. Click and hold the

Display-snapshot icon to view the most recent snapshot instead of the active composition.

See “Taking and viewing a window snapshot” on page 58.

CDE F

UG.book Page 112 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM