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Flash Learning Guide

Graphic Effects Learning Guide for Flash CS4 Professional

Adobe Flash CS4 Professional provides a number of features for producing impressive graphic effects, enhancing the look and feel of your projects. The Graphic Effects Learning Guide for Flash explains these features, from blend modes and filters to 9-slice scaling and 3D rotation. Explore the sections below to dive into whatever topic interests you.

Note: This learning guide introduces graphic effects in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and provides you with tools for developing your skills. Always consult Flash CS4 Professional Help first when learning to use new features in Flash.

Overview
Start things off right with this overview of the graphic effects capabilities of Flash CS4.

Filters
Add interesting visual effects to text, buttons, and movie clips, such as a skewed drop shadow.

Filters and ActionScript
Apply filters using the user interface in Flash, or apply filter effect to movie clips, buttons, or text fields using ActionScript.

Animated filters
Animate movie clips that have filters applied to them.

Blend modes
Create highlights or shadows that let details from an underlying image show through, or colorize a desaturated image.

Bitmaps
Create arbitrarily sized transparent or opaque bitmap images and then manipulate them in various ways at runtime.

Text
Learn about the font rendering options available in Flash to control the way your text appears at runtime.

New graphic effects features
Learn about inverse kinematics, 3D, copy/paste, and 9-slice scaling.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this learning guide, you'll need the following software:

Flash CS4 Professional

Flash Player 10

Prerequisite knowledge

You should have a basic knowledge of the Flash CS4 workspace and a basic knowledge of working with FLA files.

An intermediate knowledge of ActionScript is required for the sections of this learning guide that discuss how to create graphic effects programmatically.


Printable version

Note: If you have not upgraded yet to the latest version of Flash, you can check out the Flash 8 version or Flash CS3 version of this article.

Where to go from here

To learn more and explore what you can do with graphic effects in Flash CS4 Professional, check out the following resources in addition to the Graphic effects section of the Flash Developer Center:

About the author

This content was authored by Adobe Systems, Inc.