MX

Applying a Live Effect
To apply a Live Effect:
1.
Select the object or objects in the usual way.
2.
Select the Live Effects Tool.
3.
Click the New button on the left side of the InfoBar. This displays a partitioned list of available
effects in a menu. The first set of effects listed in the menu are Picture Editor effects. The
second set are effects provided by the built in Web Designer MX Premium Feather and
Shadow Tools. The third set of effects are "New-style" Photoshop plug-in effects and the final
set are "Old-style" Photoshop plug-in effects (see below for an explanation of these different
types).
4.
Select the effect you want to apply from the list.
5.
This will display a dialog or tool that belongs to the effect. You can adjust the various controls
and you usually get a small preview of the effect in the dialog.
Click OK
when you're done to return to Web Designer MX Premium.
Editing shapes
If you apply a Live Effect to a shape or text, the object remains fully editable. Each time you edit it in any
way, the Live Effect is automatically re-applied to the object. For locked effects this is not possible, and
you must remove the effect using the Delete
button on the Live Effect InfoBar, edit the shape, and then re-apply the effect.
Locking effects
When you resize or rotate an object which has a Live Effect applied, Web Designer Premium takes this
to be an edit and re-generates the effect. This may not be what you want, so it's useful sometimes to be
able to lock an effect.
Old-style Photoshop plug-ins are Locked
as soon as you apply them. This means the underlying shape can't be edited. You can also lock a Live
Effect and then when you resize or rotate the object the effect remains fixed, as if you were
resizing/rotating a bitmap.
As an example of this, imagine a plug-in that always applies horizontal ripples (the "Television" Live Effect
shown does something similar). Apply this effect to a shape, and you'd then see horizontal lines across it.
If you then rotated the shape, would you want the ripples to rotate with it? If so, lock the effect before
the rotation. Or would you want the horizontal ripple effect to be re-applied to your now rotated
rectangle? If so, leave the effect unlocked.
When a Live Effects is locked the effect rotates with the object (left).
When giving designs to other people to load, if they do not have the plug-ins that are used in the design,
then they won't see the effects applied. To get around this problem, you can lock the effects. Locked
effects are saved as bitmaps in the document so anyone can see them, even if they don't have the plug-ins
that generated the effects.
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