Tutorial

To take the sparkle process a bit further (upon inspiration from my partner whose words command bright glittery images), the following process will show you how to add glitter (rather than just a sparkle to images) to the muppet Abbycadabby, Figure 1.

We will first recover some parts of the muppet (4 wings and 2 arms)with paths and then add glitter by adding a "noise" effect.

Fireworks is the perfect tool to create animated GIFs by using a combination of >Layers and Frames. A Fireworks document has an indefinite number of layers and an indefinite number of objects per layer.

Figure 1: The image

1. Select an image that you want to add glitter to and open it in Fireworks.
2. Select the area that you want to add glitter to by zooming.
3. If the toolbar is not visible on the screen then use Ctrl+F2 to activate the visibility. Choose the Vector Path Tool from the Toolbar.
4. Make sure the properties are as they appear below in the PI (Property Inspector).



Figure 2: Property Inspector

5. Click at the starting point on the image and move the mouse around the image as if you were outlining with a pen - avoid any straight lines, returning to the point of origin. In this example I have used black so that you can see the outline of the path formed.
6. Now choose a colour that represents the shine of the glitter. In this example the image is Pink. I will choose the pen colour as "dark pink" and choose the "fill" (illustrated below as a "pot-of-paint tipped"). I have used #910632 for the fill and #CC0066 for the stroke.



Figure 3: Image with Paths

Layers and Frames. Each frame represents an image of the animation and with the layers panel you decide what you want to show in each frame.

7. Layers
In Figure 4, we can see the layers layout in Firworks. For example, this document has 2 layers: layer 1 and layer 2. Layer 1 has 6 objects in it and layer 2 only one and is shared accross the frames. See the ladder icon.



Figure 4: Layers Panel

The Share accross frames feature which should be read Share layers accross frames enables you to make a layer (and its objects) visible in all the frames of the animation.

If you want to share a layer accross the frames, select the layer to be shared then double-click the layer name in the Layers panel, and select Share Across Frames.



Figure 5: Share accross frames