Drawing

Selecting and transforming

Select what you want to change, then move it, copy it, reshape it, or line it up with everything else.

The Selection tool

Press V. The Selection tool is the one you will use most. When you select something with it, or with any other selecting tool (Subselection, Free Transform, Gradient Transform, the lasso tools and the 3D tools), the Properties panel shows the Object tab for what you picked.

Do this	To
Click	Select an object, or one area of merge artwork
`Shift`-click	Add to or remove from the selection
Drag on empty stage	Select everything inside a rectangle
Drag a selection	Move it; hold `Shift` to keep to straight lines
`Alt`-drag	Move a copy, leaving the original in place
Arrow keys	Nudge one pixel; ten with `Shift`
Double-click	Enter a symbol or group to edit it; on merge artwork, widen the selection. Double-click empty stage to step back out.
`Esc`	Clear the selection

Edit › Select All (Ctrl+A) and Deselect All (Ctrl+Shift+A) work too. To bend and reshape merge artwork with this tool, see Reshaping merge artwork.

Subselection

Press A. The Subselection tool edits the points of a path directly. Click a path to show its points, drawn as small hollow squares; a selected point is filled.

Drag a point, or drag a rectangle to select several and drag them together. Shift-click or Shift-drag adds points to the selection.
Drag a handle to change the curve; Alt-drag to move one handle independently of its partner.
Alt-drag from a corner point to pull out handles, or Alt-click a smooth point to make it a corner.
Nudge selected points with the arrow keys, and press Delete to remove them.

Lasso tools

The lasso slot holds three ways to select an irregular area: the Lasso (L), Polygon and Magic Wand. Hold Shift with any of them to add to the selection.

Lasso: Draw a loop freehand. Merge artwork is cut along the loop.
Polygon: Click corner after corner. Close the shape by clicking the first corner, double-clicking or pressing Enter. Esc cancels.
Magic Wand: Selects an area of similar color in a broken-apart bitmap. Threshold (0 to 200) sets how similar a color must be; Smoothing (Pixels, Rough, Normal or Smooth) sets how the edge of the selection is traced.

Free Transform

Press Q. Handles appear around the selection.

Drag	To
A corner or side handle	Scale. `Shift` keeps the proportions; `Alt` scales around the transformation point. With snapping on, the handle itself lands exactly on a guide, a grid line, or another object's edge, corner or anchor point, and an anchor point wins over a line.
Just outside a corner	Rotate. `Shift` rotates in 45° steps.
Along an edge between handles	Skew
The transformation point	Move the point that scaling and rotation work around. Double-click it to center it again.
A corner with `Ctrl`	Distort a shape freely. Add `Shift` to taper both sides together.

Free Transform tool settings with a Mode option — The Free Transform tool's **Mode** chooses Free Transform, Distort or Envelope.

In Envelope mode, a mesh of points and handles surrounds the shape, and dragging them warps the artwork inside. Esc cancels a transform in progress.

Transform commands

Modify › Transform has exact transforms:

Command	Shortcut
Scale and Rotate...	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`S`
Rotate 90° CW	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`9`
Rotate 90° CCW	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`7`
Flip Vertical, Flip Horizontal
Remove Transform	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Z`

Remove Transform returns an instance, group or object to its original size and angle.

The Transform panel

Window › Transform (Ctrl+T) scales the selection by a percentage (with Constrain to keep proportions), rotates it by an angle, or skews it. Duplicate and Transform applies the values to a copy, which is a quick way to make a ring of evenly turned copies. Remove Transform does the same as the menu command.

3D rotation and translation

Movie clips can be turned and moved in 3D, drawn in perspective. The two 3D tools share a slot in the toolbox:

3D Rotation (W): Drag a movie clip left or right to turn it about its vertical axis, up or down to tip it about its horizontal axis. It turns about its transformation point. Alt-click sets it flat again.
3D Translation (G): Drag a movie clip up to push it into the stage, down to bring it nearer. A clip further in draws smaller and closer to the vanishing point, the middle of the stage unless you move it. Move it across the stage with the Selection tool as usual.

The 3D turn and depth are keyed on keyframes like any other property, and a classic tween between two keyframes turns and moves the clip smoothly from one to the other. Each drag is a single step to undo.

With a movie clip selected, the Object tab's 3D Position and View section sets its depth (Z) exactly, how thick it is (Depth: its edges drawn back that far behind its face and shaded by the lights, a card with a visible edge or a solid block of a logo), and the view every 3D clip in the document shares: the Angle of perspective (55° unless you change it; wider exaggerates depth) and the Vanish X and Y point that depth recedes to. Reset View puts the vanishing point back in the middle of the stage and the angle at 55°.

Lights and depth of field

Lights and Depth... in the same section sets three things for every clip turned or moved in 3D in the document:

A light. Each clip is shaded by how squarely it faces the light, so a card swinging round catches the light and darkens as it turns edge on. From says where the light comes from (round from above: 90° from the right, -90° from the left), Height how far out toward you it is (90° straight from the front), Ambient how bright a clip turned away still is, and Color tints the light, warm or cool. Clips lying flat on the stage are not shaded. Pick Light 2, 3 or 4 and tick On for more lights: a warm key light and a cool one from the other side, each shading the clips in its color, added up.
Shadows. With Clips cast shadows ticked, a movie clip nearer the viewer (a lower Z) casts a soft shadow on a turned clip behind it, thrown away from each light: further and softer the further apart the two are. Darkness sets how dark, Softness how much blur for each hundred pixels between them.
Depth of field. Clips blur the further they are from the Focus depth (a Z), by Blur pixels for each hundred pixels nearer or further: a sharp title with a soft background pushed back behind it. Key the clips' Z to rack focus as they move.

Five cards on a dark blue stage: one flat and unshaded, two turned toward a warm light and lit, one turned away and dark and blurred deep in the stage, and one near the viewer, large and blurred — A warm light from the upper left, and depth of field focused on the stage.

All of these are Phoenix's own: another app opening the FLA file shows the clips flat, unshaded, sharp, without shadows or depth.

Cut, copy and paste

Command	Shortcut	Notes
Cut	`Ctrl`+`X`
Copy	`Ctrl`+`C`
Paste in Center	`Ctrl`+`V`	Pastes in the middle of the view
Paste in Place	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`V`	Pastes at the original position, for example on another frame or layer. With frames chosen on the timeline, it pastes onto each keyframe they cover, on every unlocked layer chosen
Duplicate	`Ctrl`+`D`	Copies and pastes in one step
Clear	`Delete`	Removes the selection

Copies go to the system clipboard. You can paste artwork between two Phoenix windows, and paste your artwork into other apps as a picture or as SVG. Phoenix pastes in images, text, SVG and PDF artwork from other apps, and files copied in your file manager, which come in as if you had imported them.

Arrange and lock

Objects on a layer are stacked. Use Modify › Arrange to change their order:

Command	Shortcut
Bring to Front	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`↑`
Bring Forward	`Ctrl`+`↑`
Send Backward	`Ctrl`+`↓`
Send to Back	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`↓`
Lock	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`L`
Unlock All	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`Shift`+`L`

When several objects are selected, they move through the stack together. Merge artwork always stays below the layer's groups, symbol instances and drawing objects, so Arrange moves it only among the other merge artwork, and moves objects only among objects. A locked object can't be selected until you unlock it.

Align

Window › Align (Ctrl+K) lines up the selected objects:

Align their left edges, centers or right edges, or their tops, middles or bottoms.
Distribute them so their edges or centers are evenly spaced.
Match size to make them the same width, height or both.
Space evenly to put equal gaps between them, across or down.

Check Align to stage to align to the stage instead of to each other, for example to center an object on the stage.

The same commands are on Modify › Align, with keys: Left, Horizontal Center and Right (Ctrl+Alt+1 to 3), Top, Vertical Center and Bottom (Ctrl+Alt+4 to 6), Make Same Width and Make Same Height (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+7 and 9), and To Stage (Ctrl+Alt+8), which turns aligning to the stage on and off for all of them.

The Info panel

Window › Info (Ctrl+I) shows the size and position of the selection, the position of the cursor, and the color under the cursor.

Position and size

For exact numbers, use the Position and Size section of the Object tab: X and Y set the position, and W and H the size. Click the chain button to keep the width and height in proportion.

Shape commands

Modify › Shape cleans up and reshapes merge artwork and drawing objects:

Smooth: Softens curves and removes small bumps. Repeat to smooth further. Also on the Object tab as Smoothen.
Straighten: Flattens nearly straight curves into lines. Also on the Object tab.
Advanced Smooth...: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M. Smooths only the corners sharper or blunter than the angles you set (a straight run is 180°), as strongly as you choose.
Advanced Straighten...: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N. Straightens as strongly as you choose. With Recognize shapes, a closed path that reads as a rectangle or an oval becomes a true one.
Optimize...: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C. Reduces the number of points in curves, at a strength you choose.
Convert Lines to Fills: Turns strokes into filled shapes, so you can reshape their edges or fill them with a gradient.
Expand Fill...: Grows or shrinks (insets) a fill by a distance in pixels.
Soften Fill Edges...: Adds a set of fading bands around a fill, outward or inward, for a soft edge.

Distribute to layers

Modify › Timeline › Distribute to Layers (Ctrl+Shift+D) moves each selected object onto a new layer of its own, ready to animate separately.

Modify › Timeline › Distribute to Keyframes does the same in time: the bottom object stays on the current keyframe and each one above it moves to a new keyframe of its own, one after another, which turns a row of drawings into frame-by-frame animation.