Currently, items on slides can only be zoomed proportionally. I would like to be able to scale in the horizontal or the vertical directions independently.
In the demo slide show that comes with FM4, white and black bars are being used to separate images (e.g., see the wedding shots or the sailing shots). Getting info on those items, they are something like 2500 x 20 pixels wide. I discovered that if they are zoomed to an extremely large percentage (perhaps to create a black “mask” over a slide), the EDGES of that black bar become fuzzier and fuzzier (adding transparency) along the edges as the bar expands.
If I use the maximum width and height for MY monitor (1920 x 1200) and create a bar of THAT size, then I “reduce” it, it shrinks in BOTH directions. I would have to “pre-calculate” how big a bar should be so that when I do reduce it, I have enough in the opposite direction to extend from one side of my screen to the other (does that make sense?). In other words, to reduce a 1920 x 1200 bar to 600 wide (50% zoom), I’d have to build the bar in Photoshop 1920 x 2 = 3840 pixels long to be able to reach the edges when it’s reduced.
On the other hand, with non-proportional (independent) scaling, if I were to create a black square (say 100 x 100 pixels) as a reusable device, I could place it on a slide and scale it 1920% in the x-direction and 600% in the y-direction.