Macromedia Fireworks Tutorials >> New Tutorials >> Paste Inside Masking Tutorial

Fireworks MX 2004: Paste Inside Tutorial - Part 2

Step 3: Using Paste Inside

We are now ready for the fun part. The easy part. This is where the magic happens. Well, it's not really magic but it sure seems like it is.

Web Site
First we'll paste the screen grab of our web site into the overhead

1. Select the screen grab and move it over the overhead
2. Reduce the screen grab's opacity in the Property inspector to around 50% so you can view the overhead under the path.
3. Scale the screen grab down so it fits more realistically inside the overhead. You will also need to use the Distort tool to reshape the top and bottom right corner of the screen grab.
4. After you've positioned the screen grab in place, put the opacity back to 100% in the Property inspector and click Edit > Cut to cut the graphic to the clip board.
5. Select the path you created around the overhead and go to Edit > Paste Inside. This"pastes" the screen grab inside the path.
6. Select the vector mask thumbnail by clicking on it
7. Deselect "Show fill and stroke" in the Property inspector to hide the stroke around the screen grab
8. You may find areas of the screen grab that are not as well aligned with the overhead as you would like. Simply select the Subselection tool and click on any of the path's points to edit the vector mask.

Table
This procedure is identical to the overhead

1. Select the blue bitmap and move it over the table in mainImage. This is already scaled to the right size so you don't have to resize it.
2. Position it where it covers the entire path of the table
3. Go to Edit > Cut to cut the blue bitmap to the clipboard
4. Select the path around the table and go to Edit > Paste Inside
5. Edit the vector mask as needed with the Sub selection tool

Window
The final part of our project is the window

1. Select image3 and reduce the opacity to around 50 percent in the Property inspector
2. Move image3 over the window and place it so the trees are center of the far right window
3. Once in place, put the opacity back to 100%
4. Go to Edit > Cut to cut the image to the clipboard
5. Select the path around the window and go to Edit > Paste Inside
6. Edit the vector mask as needed with the Subselection tool

Step 4: Editing image3 in the Vector Mask

Immediately you notice the grassy image is a little too vivid for the other colors in our room. Let's do some quick editing to the image to make it blend better.

1. Select the bitmap thumbnail in the Layers panel
2. In the Property inspector, click the Add Effects button and select Adjust Color > Hue/Saturation...
3. Slide the Saturation to around -35. Anywhere in that area is fine. Click OK to close the Hue/Saturation window.
4. Click the Add Effects button again and this time select Blur > Gaussian Blur... and set the value of the blur to around .5 - .7. Click OK to close the Gaussian Blur window.

That should help it look a little more realistic.

Conclusion
This concludes Fireworks MX 2004: Paste Inside Tutorial. We covered a little more than only Paste Inside but I hope this lesson helped in showing you how several tools and techniques come together to create effects.

As always, if you have any questions regarding this or any other tutorial on our site, please feel free to email us at: info@cbtcafe.com. Please be sure to reference the tutorial in the subject line of your email.