Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 Studio Techniques

To create an object, select an object creation tool, such as Rectangle, from the Tools panel, then click and drag in the drawing area. The farther you drag from the first click point, the larger your object. To conform the object to a 1:1 ratio, hold down Shift as you drag. If you want to make a perfect circle, for example, select the Ellipse tool, hold down the Shift key, and drag (Figure 10.10).

When your cursor is in a Tool mode (one of the 15 text or object tools), its only function is to create the item associated with the tool. If you want to modify an object's dimensions, you must switch to the Selection tool (press V or click it in the Tools panel). With the Selection tool, you can click and drag the objects to move them. Pressing Alt while dragging duplicates an object.

Editing an Object's Physical Dimensions

Create a square or any object, then click on the Selection tool to activate it; you will see eight adjustment handles with which you can modify the object's dimensions. Clicking and dragging on the corner handles increases the object's size from the selected corner. Clicking and dragging from the side handle points adjusts the size of the object on the side that you are dragging. In both cases, holding the Shift key while dragging preserves the object's aspect ratio, meaning the object's size increases or decreases uniformly. When you hover over one of the corner handles, the cursor switches to the Rotation tool; grab the handles to rotate the selected item. Holding down the Shift key constrains rotation to exact 45-degree increments (Figures 10.11a and b).

For more detailed adjustments to specific dimensions, select the object and adjust it using the controls in the Transform panel (Figure 10.12). Here, you can adjust the object's location by specifying coordinates for X Position and Y Position, as well as set exact values for the object's Width and Height. You can also adjust the Opacity para-meter, which determines the transparency of the object, and Rotation, which turns the object the number of degrees you specify, up to 360.