Special Effects in Flash

As I have mentioned before, Alpha (which changes the transparency of an object) is one of the four effects you can apply to symbols. The other are:

• Brightness: Changes the brightness of a symbol instance
• Tint: Changes the color of the symbol instance.
• Special: Lets you modify both Alpha and Tint for a symbol instance.

Firstly, we'll make a small movie.

Creating the basic Flash file

Open a new file. Change the layer name to something more descriptive (Yes, I shall keep on reminding you of this). Draw a rectangle in the first frame. Convert this into a symbol, since Flash effects can only be applied on symbols. Align the object to the center of the page.
Add a keyframe at frame 30 and then create a motion tween between the starting and the ending frames.
Here is what I made:

Applying the Tint effect

Hightlight frame 30 (which is a keyframe) and select the symbol instance using the arrow tool . Open the Instance Properties window by clicking on Modify - Instance. Click the Color Effect, and select Tint from the drop down menu.
Move the Tint slider to 100% or alternatively enter the value in the text field. Move the color slider up and select a color from the color palette. Check the image below for details.

If you are familiar with RGB color codes, you can enter the color red, blue and green color values in their respective fields instead of moving the color slider and selecting a color from the palette.
I changed the tint of the symbol instance in the ending frame to a bright yellow. The square in my file now changes color from cyan to yellow.

Brightness

The Brightness effect is simple. You need to select Brightness from the Color Effect drop down menu and then move the slider for a desired shade or alternatively, enter a value in the text field.


With brightness set to -50% for the symbol instance in the final frame the flash movie I'm creating would change:

Special

The Special Effects window presents a set of sliders and their associated text fields through which you can change both the RGB (color) and alpha values for the same symbol instance.