FLASH8 Filter and Blending mode (1): Filter Effect Overview

The filters and blending modes are the two important features of Flash Professional 8, which has just been released, greatly enhancing its design capabilities. But for many designers, these in a lot of graphics and image software have functions, may be too commonplace, it is not uncommon.

However, the view, this does not affect the two new features on the production of Flash animation convenience and great impact. They almost subvert the long-standing bias against Flash's ability to design, making it more impressive.

Let's take a look at the Flash8 filter effect, which brings us 7 filters to choose from, as shown in Figure 1. I'm more inclined to look at them as a layer effect, because they are similar to other graphic software. Using Photoshop as a reference, this menu is a command that integrates several functional modules. For example, the projection, luminescence is often categorized as a layer effect, and adjust the color is a typical image adjustment commands and so on.

In Flash8, using filters is limited to three types of movie clips, buttons, and text. In other words, you can't apply a filter to a normal shape, even if you're drawing an object, and you can't even add a filter to the graphic symbol.

The way to add a filter to an image is very simple, but first you want to create a movie clip or a button symbol and press Ctrl+f8, as shown in Figure 2.

OK, we've drawn two shapes anywhere and set them to movie clips and button symbols. Dot Properties Panel of the filter, when it is already available, press the + number, in the pop-up menu, set the corresponding filter, OK, look at the effect of the setting, see Figure 3, is not it feel very convenient?

Of course, as has been said above, we can also apply filters to text, we enter a line of text, Figure 4 shows the effect of the filter after its application.

With these features, it would be surprisingly handy to make text and button effects later. There is no need to add multiple objects to a simple effect in flash, and there is no need to start a giant like Photoshop for such a trivial matter. More gratifying is that these effects also maintain the characteristics of the vector, unlike before in the livemotion, although there are good results, but come out is a pixel map.

Well, let's extend that, predictably, making the flip button is definitely a sharp knife cut tofu. Try it first, create a new movie clip, and draw a shape anywhere. Create a New button symbol and enter the edit state of the button, as shown in Figure 5

Press Ctrl+l to pull out the library, drag the newly created movie clip from the library into the scene, and set the filter effect for it, as shown in Figure 6.
Inserts a keyframe in the "pointer past" state, copying the contents of the previous frame. Change the filter effect, such as blurring and adjusting its color to make it different from the first frame. As shown in Figure 7, OK, I don't set the frame at the back, the same way as before.

To go back to the main scene and drag the button from the library, we can move the mouse over to test it (select the "Start Simple button" item in the Control menu), as shown in Figure 8. The method is not very simple and efficient, of course, more importantly, the effect is good yo.

Here we have a simple understanding of the effect of the filter, in the next section, we will select a few more features of the filter, a detailed display of the charm of the filter.