Selecting, Moving and Resizing Graphics and Text Objects

The cursor is always active to select an object. The current object selected is said to be in focus and is highlighted in a white box.

Moving the cursor over an object causes it to be highlighted.

The object may be selected (put in focus) by left clicking on it. The focus will be indicated by the appearance of a dotted white box (see illustration above with blue dots in its corners (stretch handles).

Once an item is selected it can be deleted moved, resized or have actions, effects and animation assigned to it. All of these properties will be discussed in subsequent sections.

Multiple objects may be selected (only one is in focus).

Multiple objects may be selected in two ways.

• Hold the Ctrl key down and click on subsequent objects.
• Move the cursor into an empty space and hold the left mouse button down. A blue box will appear and expand with the mouse movements. All objects that are touched by the select box will become highlighted in blue to indicate that they are selected.

The selected objects may then be grouped, aligned, and deleted.

Pressing the Tab key will move the focus to the next object and the Shift Tab combination will move the focus to the previous object.

At the bottom of the image area is a status bar and object selection control.

Object Status and selection Bar

The location of the upper left hand corner of the selected object is indicated by coordinates shown to the far left. They are shown in pixels with (0,0) located in the upper left hand corner of the image are.

The coordinates will change as the selected object is moved.

The object may be dragged with the mouse or nudged with key combinations.

When the Shift key is held down the movement of the image is restrained to either vertical or horizontal. The direction is the first direction the object is dragged.

For precise movement of an object the nudge keys can be used.

Holding Ctrl and the left, right, up or down keys will nudge the object in the direction indicated by the arrow key.

To the right of the location indicator is the size indicator of the selected object. The size is shown in pixels. The format is width x height.

The object size may be changed using either the mouse or key combinations.

A check box provides constraint controls on the object shape. Selecting the Keep Original Shape box maintains the original shape (aspect ratio) of the object. No selecting this lets the object be stretched in any direction independently changing its shape as well as it's size.

Moving the mouse over the edges or corners of the object will reveal the resizing handle icons. The object is resized by then holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse in the direction you which to resize the objects.

The Shift and arrow key combinations will also resize the object and can be used for precise sizing.