Common Annotated Controls

The center circle control is displayed by all live effects, and can be used in three ways.

1. If multiple objects with supported live effects are selected, only one can be operated on at a time. This targeted object has its annotated controls drawn in red (by default), while the other objects’ controls are drawn in grey. To target a selected object so its live effect may be edited, click its center circle control:

Stylism Click to Target Example

Alternatively, you can simply click or drag the (grey) control of a non-targeted object to target it. However, not all controls may be available for non-targeted objects.

2. Doubleclicking on the center circle control will bring up the live effect’s native parameters dialog for the targeted object, allowing you to edit the live effect in the normal way:

Stylism Opening Native Parameters Dialog

3. When multiple objects with the same live effect are selected, the parameters of some or all of the non-targeted objects may be changed to match those of the targeted object, by syncing them. To do this, drag from the center circle control of the targeted object. A thick, semi-transparent line will follow the cursor. As the cursor is passed over the center circles of the non-targeted objects, the line will remain connecting them, adding them to the sync set and indicating that their live effect parameters will be changed to match the targeted object when the mouse button is released:

Stylism Syncing Effects

While dragging to sync, there are several keypresses which can be used:

Shift: Instead of adding art to the sync set when the cursor is passed over its center circle, it toggles that state (i.e., if it was set to sync, it will not sync).

Space: Temporarily hides the annotations.

Backspace: Removes the previously-added art (if any) from the sync set.

A: Adds all eligible art to the sync set. If there are many art objects selected, this is much faster than manually dragging the cursor around to add each one individually.

N: Removes all eligible are from the sync set (i.e., clears any sync set selection already made).

Annotated Controls and Common Drag Keypresses

All of the effect’s annotated controls which are dragged, such as slider thumbs, react the same way to several keypresses:

Command/Ctrl: Enables “slow-drag”. When slow-dragging is active, the motion of the cursor is divided by a factor called the slow-drag divider value (specified in the Stylism Preferences dialog), allowing finer control over the movement of the control. For example, if the Slow-Drag Divider is at its default value of 10, and the zoom level is 100%, then moving the cursor by 7 pixels would result in a virtual movement of the control by only 0.7 pixels.

Space: Temporarily hides all of the annotations while the key is held down.

C: Changes the annotation color, cycling through red, blue, magenta, green black, and grey.