Fireworks has color- and tone-adjustment filters to help you improve and enhance the colors in your bitmap images. You can adjust the contrast and brightness, the tonal range, and the hue and color saturation of your images.

Applying filters as Live Filters from the Property inspector is nondestructive. Live Filters do not permanently alter the pixels; you can remove or edit them anytime.

If you prefer to apply filters in an irreversible, permanent way, you can select them from the Filters menu. However, Adobe recommends that you use filters as Live Filters whenever possible.

You can apply filters from the Filters menu to pixel selections, but not Live Filters. You can, however, define an area of a bitmap and create a separate bitmap from it, and then apply a Live Filter to it.

If you apply a filter to a selected vector object using the Filters menu, Fireworks converts the selection to a bitmap.

To apply a Live Filter to an area defined by a bitmap selection marquee:

  1. Select a bitmap selection tool and draw a selection marquee.
  2. Select Edit > Cut.
  3. Select Edit > Paste.

    Fireworks pastes the selection exactly where the pixels were originally located, but the selection is now a separate bitmap object.

  4. Click the thumbnail of the new bitmap object in the Layers panel to select the bitmap object.
  5. Apply a Live Filter from the Property inspector.

    Fireworks applies the Live Filter only to the new bitmap object, simulating the application of a filter to a pixel selection.

    NOTE

    Although Live Filters are more flexible, large numbers of Live Filters in a document can slow down Fireworks performance. For more information, see Controlling document redraw.