Operation Manual

220 Colour, Fills, and Transparency

Applying a gradient or bitmap fill

The easiest way to apply a gradient or bitmap fill is to use one of a range of

pre-supplied swatch thumbnails in the Swatches tab's Gradient or Bitmap

palettes. The Fill Tool and a Fill dialog are alternative methods for creating

gradient fills (these are covered in online Help).

To apply a gradient or bitmap fill using the Swatches tab:

1. Click the Swatches tab and ensure the

Fill button is selected.

NOTE: The colour of the underline reflects the colour of your selected

object (or selected node).

2. For gradient fills, select Linear, Elliptical or Conical as the

gradient type from the Gradient button's drop-down menu.

For bitmap fills, select a drop-down menu category from the

Bitmap button.

3. Select the object(s), and click the appropriate gallery swatch for the fill

you want to apply.

Drag from the gallery swatch onto any object and release the mouse

button.

4. If needed, adjust the fill's Tint at the bottom of the tab with the tab slider

or set a percentage value in the input box.

Setting transparency

Transparency effects are great for highlights, shading and shadows, and

simulating "rendered" realism. They can make the critical difference between

flat-looking illustrations and images with depth and snap.

Transparency may seem a bit tricky because by definition, you can't "see" it

the way you can see a colour fill applied to an object. In fact, it's there all the

time in WebPlus. Each new object has a transparency property: the default

just happens to be "None"—that is, no transparency (opaque).