Seeing Both the Forest and the Trees
Sometimes, in Flash, I’m working on a bit of artwork that is small, but fairly detailed. Icons come to mind, or a cartoon character’s face. In these cases, I often zoom in well over 1,000% to get a clear view of the minutiae. In spite of that, I want a “big picture” view of the whole graphic, to keep tabs on how the minor tweaks affect the whole.
For the longest time, I simply zoomed in and out as needed. Keyboard shortcuts naturally help (Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-– in Windows), but even so, it can get tedious. Then, one day, I found an even better approach. To maintain two (or more) views of the same work area, head to Window > New Window or Window > Duplicate Window, depending on your version of Flash. Doing so opens a second (or third, etc.) view of your current workspace, functionally identical to Window > Arrange > New Window in Photoshop. These views are synchronized, so a change to any one of them is immediately updated in all windows. Generally speaking, after I create such a duplicate view, I head to Window > Tile to instantly arrange both views side-by-side. In the “big picture” view, I usually hide the Timeline panel, but that’s up to you.
December 12th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
You can do this in photoshop and illustrator as well. It’s under Window.
In flash if you hold CTRL… and press 2, 1 you get a centered 100% view.
I have a question though… is there a way to nudge anchor points / textFields (with the arrow keys) a full pixel when you are at a zoom amount other than 100%?
December 12th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
var,
If you have Snap to Pixels on, you’re there.
December 14th, 2006 at 2:02 am
when selecting an anchor point with the sub selection tool, with view > snapping > snap to pixels selected… the anchor point seems to snap to the center of the pixels square. Additionally, when selecting the bottom right anchor point of a rectangle.. pressing left arrow induces a shift up and left… If you are at 100%, you can nudge around nicely without ruining any of your vector edges and getting some fuzzyness.
December 14th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Woops, sorry var … I must have read your question too quickly. I only saw the word “textfields,” which do snap to pixels, as do symbols. Anchor points do not, as you describe. This might be something that could be tackled with JSFL, but yeah … not something Flash just does on its own. :-/
February 19th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Hm regarding the topic I have an issue. I use the functionality you described in Photoshop all the time, but when I went for the same result in Flash 8 I stranded a yard before the finish line: I have a two monitor setup and use the second monitor in Photoshop to display “the forest”, but Flash doesn’t allow windows to be dragged outside it’s drawing board.
A workaround solution would be to resize the flash window, dragging it onto the two screens, but working in a setup where both monitors aren’t on the same height that does not give a satisfying result.
:-/
March 27th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Tiemen,
Odd. I don’t have a multiple monitor setup, but I have friends who do, and they don’t experience the problem you’re seeing.