Flash 8 v Flickr

Flash 8 v Flickr
I’ve been looking forward to playing around with the filters in the new Flash 8, but have always treated new features like this in any software with caution. As you soon learn with Photoshop, the majority of filters you never really use on a daily basis, if at all. Pretty much all you ever need is Gaussian Blur!

But new features can mean new possibilities and Macromedia have done a sterling job in adding some much needed love and attention to the visual side of Flash, as opposed to the last major update where it was all about the code. No doubt we’re going to see a zillion sites making use of drop shadows, bevels, blur and the like just for the sake of it. For me any use of effects have to be born from a concept, not just because it’s suddenly possible.

So like many people I’ve been tinkering around with this stuff. Nothing earth shattering at all, but I wanted to repurpose the Flickr viewer to show photos in a spiral form with a sense of depth of field. I thought this would be a doddle in Flash 8, but there’s always a catch. Filters can’t be applied to dynamically loaded images. Which seems a bit of a bummer. But as anyone who’s worked with Flash for many years knows, there’s always a workaround. Luckily sat across from my desk is Paul Neave - it’s like having a living breathing Flash forum on tap! Paul said it’s possible by (and here comes the techy bit) drawing the dynamically loaded picture into a new BitmapData object. Sure enough it worked like a charm.

Take a look at version one of the FlickrTimeTunnel - in all it’s Depth of Field loveliness.