After you create a symbol, you can create instances of that symbol throughout your document, including inside other symbols. When you modify the symbol, Flash Professional updates all instances of the symbol.

You can give names to instances from the Property inspector. Use the instance name to refer to an instance in ActionScript. To control instances with ActionScript®, give each instance within a single timeline a unique name. For more information, see Handling events in Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash or Handling events in the ActionScript 3.0 Developer’s Guide.

To specify color effects, assign actions, set the graphic display mode, or change the behavior of new instances, use the Property inspector. The behavior of the instance is the same as the symbol behavior, unless you specify otherwise. Any changes you make affect only the instance and not the symbol.

Each symbol instance has its own properties that are separate from the symbol. You can change the tint, transparency, and brightness of an instance; redefine how the instance behaves (for example, change a graphic to a movie clip); and specify how an animation plays inside a graphic instance. You can also skew, rotate, or scale an instance without affecting the symbol.

In addition, you can name a movie clip or button instance so that you can use ActionScript to change its properties. For more information, see Classes in Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash or Objects and classes in Learning ActionScript 3.0. To edit instance properties, you use the Property inspector (Windows > Properties).

The properties of an instance are saved with it. If you edit a symbol or relink an instance to a different symbol, any instance properties you’ve changed still apply to the instance.

You can make a symbol instance on the Stage invisible by turning off the Visible property. Using the Visible property provides faster rendering performance than setting the symbol’s Alpha property to 0.

The Visible property requires a Player setting of Flash Player 10.2 or later and is only compatible with movie clip, button, and component instances.

1. Select the instance on the Stage.

2. In the Display section of the Properties panel, deselect the Visible property.

1. Select the instance on the Stage, and select Window > Properties.
2. In the Property inspector, select one of the following options from the Style menu in the Color Effect section:

   Brightness

   Adjusts the relative lightness or darkness of the image, measured on a scale from black (–100%) to white (100%). To adjust brightness, click the triangle and drag the slider or enter a value in the box.

   Tint

   Colors the instance with the same hue. To set the tint percentage from transparent (0%) to completely saturated (100%), use the Tint slider in the Property inspector. To adjust tint, click the triangle and drag the slider or enter a value in the box. To select a color, enter red, green, and blue values in the respective boxes, or click the Color control and select a color from the Color Picker.

   Alpha

   Adjusts the transparency of the instance, from transparent (0%) to completely saturated (100%). To adjust the alpha value, click the triangle and drag the slider or enter a value in the box.

   Advanced

   Separately adjusts the red, green, blue, and transparency values of an instance. This is most useful to create and animate subtle color effects on objects such as bitmaps. The controls on the left let you reduce the color or transparency values by a specified percentage. The controls on the right let you reduce or increase the color or transparency values by a constant value.

   The current red, green, blue, and alpha values are multiplied by the percentage values, and then added to the constant values in the right column, producing the new color values. For example, if the current red value is 100, setting the left slider to 50% and the right slider to 100% produces a new red value of 150 ([100 x .5] + 100 = 150).

   Note: The Advanced settings in the Effect panel implement the function (a * y+ b)= x where a is the percentage specified in the left set of boxes, y is the color of the original bitmap, b is the value specified in the right set of boxes, and x is the resulting effect (between 0 and 255 for RGB, and 0 and 100 for alpha transparency).

   You can also change the color of an instance using the ActionScript ColorTransform object. For detailed information on the Color object, see ColorTransform in ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference or ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference.

To display a different instance on the Stage and preserve all the original instance properties, such as color effects or button actions, assign a different symbol to an instance.

For example, suppose you’re creating a cartoon with a rat symbol for your character, but decide to change the character to a cat. You could replace the rat symbol with the cat symbol and have the updated character appear in roughly the same location in all your frames.

1. Select the instance on the Stage, and select Window > Properties.
2. Select Graphic, Button, or Movie Clip from the menu in the Property inspector.

1. Select a graphic instance on the Stage, and select Window > Properties.
2. Select an animation option from the Options menu in the Looping section of the Property inspector:

   Loop

   Loops all the animation sequences contained in the current instance for as many frames as the instance occupies.

   Play Once

   Plays the animation sequence beginning from the frame you specify to the end of the animation and then stops.

   Single Frame

   Displays one frame of the animation sequence. Specify which frame to display.

3. To specify the first frame of the graphic symbol to display when looping, enter a frame number in the First text box. The Single Frame option also uses the frame number you specify here.

1. Select the instance on the Stage.
2. Select Modify > Break Apart. This action breaks the instance into its component graphic elements.
3. To modify these elements, use the painting and drawing tools.

The Property inspector and Info panel display the following information about instances selected on the Stage:

• In the Property inspector, view the instance’s behavior and settings—for all instance types, color effect settings, location, and size; for graphics, the loop mode and first frame that contains the graphic; for buttons, the instance name (if assigned) and tracking option; for movie clips, the instance name (if assigned). For location, the Property inspector displays the x and y coordinates of either the symbol’s registration point or the symbol’s upper-left corner, depending on which option is selected in the Info panel.

• In the Info panel, view the instance’s size and location; the location of its registration point; its red (R), green (G), blue (B), and alpha (A) values (if the instance has a solid fill); and the location of the pointer. The Info panel also displays the x and y coordinates of either the symbol’s registration point or the symbol’s upper-left corner, depending on which option is selected. To display the coordinates of the registration point, click the center square in the Coordinate grid in the Info panel. To display the coordinates of the upper-left corner, click the upper-left square in the Coordinate grid.

• In the Movie Explorer, view the contents of the current document, including instances and symbols.

  View any actions assigned to a button or movie clip in the Actions panel.