Flash is a program used to make animations and games that are most commonly used on the internet. You can also make website templates or a full blown website with it. Adobe and/or Macromedia has a nice flash program. The newest version of there flash program is CS4. It's everything you could possibly need for animating.

What is a pre-loader?

Well a flash pre-loader is just a loading bar for an animation or game. But there's a little more to it then you would think. Without one of these, when someone was to view your flash file it would just have a blank screen until the file loads. With one of these it will show how much of the file has been loaded. Just like a loading bar you've probably seen on things before.

How to make a pre-loader.

Here are some step by step instructions that should help you make a pre-loader in your adobe flash animation.

1. Open a new ActionScript 2.0 file
2. Create an animation
3. Add a blank keyframe for the very first frame in this animation.
4. Right click on the first frame and click on actions
5. Give it the action (copy and paste)

stop();
onEnterFrame = function() {
var amount:Number = this.getBytesLoaded()/ this.getBytesTotal() *100;v
loader._xscale = amount 
if(amount == 100) {
this.gotoAndPlay(2);
delete this.onEnterFrame;
}

}

• Next draw a rectangle you want for your pre-loader
• save that rectangle as a symbol and make it a movie clip
• click on the rectangle you have out on the stage in your animation
• then go to properties and give it the instance name loader

Now when you test your animation the loader wont work but it will when its on a website, such as newgrounds.

What is flash?

Flash is like a flip book you may have made as a child where you draw a picture then slightly change it on every page so when you flip the pages it makes a short animation. Except flash is all compressed into a computer program. This program has many different tools to help you draw each frame of your animation. The animation you make is made up of a timeline which is made of frames. Each frame would be like each page in a flip book.

Requirements

There are a couple things you need to be able to make these animations and games

1. A computer
2. A flash program
3. Ideas and ability to draw
   

If your reading this you must already have a computer so we can check that one off.  Now for a flash program, there are many different ones, but Adobe Flash is by far the best. You can download a free trial for 30 days from Adobe.com. Just go to there website and go to there downloads tab and click trial downloads. then look for Adobe Flash CS4. Thats the newest one they have. If you would like to buy this program you can, but it's a little pricey. You can pay up to about $700.00 it. Now you need the ability to draw on a computer. (not literally draw on your computer) 

How to make your animation

Im going to tell you how to make a ball move across the screen for an example.

1. Open Adobe Flash 
2. Create a new actionscript 2.0 project
3. select the oval tool (o)
4. draw a circle on the left side of the screen
5. Insert> Timeline> Keyframe or press (f6)
6. now on your second keyframe move the ball a little bit to the right from its location in frame 1
7. continue making keyframes and moving the ball across the screen
8. test your animation by going to control> test movie

Now that you have the idea of how to make an animation, make a new file and make your own animation. When your done making it, go to file> save and compact. Then go to www.newgrounds.com and sign up for a free account. Once you've done that, sign in on it and upload your animation, and if other people give it a good rating, while its in the process of being submitted onto the website, your animation will end up being part of newgrounds and other can go watch it.

We will be using this image to create a variety of black and white photos, to bring out the best of a colour photo in black and white. The simplest way is not always the best.

Desaturation

This uses the simplest tool in PS, to make a black and white image.

Image > Adjustments > Desaturation

From here the contrast and brightness can be changed in a variety of ways. I personally use curves, but all four methods will be shown below. All can be found in image > adjustments. One must note there are other ways but these are the most common and effective.

You can make not only the images a higher contrast as above, but a lower contrast to give a more dreamy effect.

Colour balance

Image > adjustments > colour balance

This allows you to desaturate an image and give it a tint as I've done below. You drag all the options to the far left, and the image will go greyscale, after this you can use shadows/highlights to add a tint.

Hue saturation

This allows the same flexibility as colour balance, but is simpler to use. You drag the saturation counter to the far left. To colourise the image, click the colourise option on the far bottom right.

Gradient map

This allows you to do all sorts of things intop of turning your photo into a black and white. To use this option you use the present gradients, and select the option with the black and white swatch, in the adjustments menu.

You can also go to mode > greyscale, but if you wish to add colour you must then change the mode back.

There is now a link to using channels in Photoshop, for anyone who wishes to check out another method.

The Eraser Tool -> Background Eraser Tool -> Magic Eraser Tool

Some of the other tools are rarely used like the smudge and the dodge tool but when used correctly, they result in a very beautiful effect.

The First tool is the Move Tool (V). That (V) is the shortcut key, so instead of clicking on it you can just press V on your keyboard and boom.....there it is. This tool is used to move layers around in the canvas.

The Marquee tool is just right under it. It's good to create shapes, columns and rows. I personally use it mostly in web designing but that's not the only use.

The Lasso Tool is in 3rd place and is one of the most important tool in photoshop. For example, you've got an image and it consists of 3 people sitting in the country side waving. Now you decided you want to cut one of them and put it on another image but only him no background or else. All you got to do is go around him with the lasso tool, the trick here is to be calm, really calm, then when ready you connect the lasso tool with the very first box marker.

Hint: You can zoom in the image to be more accurate. Once you have started the lasso you can't stop and continue later you need to finish it !

Right at the 4th place there is the Qucik selection tool or Magic Wand. They have roughly the same job, instead of using the lasso if an image is very clear with high definition it can go around it alone, just by clicking on the item.

At 5th place, The Crop tool. It is used frequently, mostly at resizing parts of an image. You need to create a square around the text or image you want to copy to another canvas so that you can work easily there and then right click and crop.

At the last of this section of tools there is the Slice Tool used in web designing to slice the web template.

Hint: Do not use this instead of the crop, they don't have anything to do with each other's uses.

That's all for this tutorial, I will explain some of the rest tools in my next tutorial. See ya and just try to experiment with your photoshop, the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it.

Thanks

1. Import the sound into the library, then add the sound to a key frame in the time line.
2. Import the sound into the library and then use ActionScript to dynamically control the sound.
3. Use ActionScript to dynamically load and play the sound.

This Flash CS3 Tutorial is not really going to cover the first way to play a sound. You should know how to import an image into your library, you import a sound the same way. And just as you would drag an instance of an image onto the stage, you can also drag a sound onto the stage. The sound will simply play every time the key frame plays. Let work on the second way of playing a sound.

A sound file has already been imported into the library. However, if you wish to use your own audio file you can do so by going to File - Import - Import to Library, and select an audio file . Flash CS3 by default will allow you to import, AIF, WAV and MP3 files. There are additional plug ins that enable more files types. Right Click the audio file called Ring.wav. Select Linkage, Check export for ActionScript, leave the base class alone, but you may change the Class to any name you can remember. This CS3 Tutorial is simply going to delete the .wav from the Class name, thus calling the sound Ring. CS3 Linkage Panel

Now, something needs to be done to call the sound. As normal select the first key frame on the actions layer and press F9 to open the actions panel. In Flash CS3 using ActionScript you need to create a new instance of just bout anything you want to work with. So, create a new instance of the sound by creating a new variable and setting it to the sound. In the example code the variable phoneRing was created, set as equal to a new instance of Ring. The next line of code actually tells flash to play the sound. After typing, or copying and pasting the code to your file, you may test it.

var phoneRing:Ring = new Ring() phoneRing.play()

Press Control-Enter to hear your sound play once..

The last method of playing a sound is to load the sound dynamically. The advantage to dynamically load sounds is that the sounds will not increase the size of your .swf, thereby keeping the download times lower. Copy the code from the example and paste it in the actions panel below the code that makes the phone ring. URLRquest is a new method introduced in ActionScript 3.0. The getURL method no longer exists, therefore you may want to get familiar with URLRequest, but not in this CS3 Tutorial. In the example code you are simply telling Flash to go get the file listed in between the quotation marks. You can use http:// if the file is not located next to the .swf. Next in the example code, the variable Music is created and defined as a sound. Lastly, the variable music is loaded with the file from the URLRequest. At this point the sound is loaded but nothing is being done with it. Lets do something with it.

var yourRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest ("SideOfABullet.mp3") var Music:Sound = new Sound() Music.load(yourRequest)

You should have noticed the stop and play button located in the start01.flv file. The final part of this Flash CS3 tutorial will be using those buttons. Before, ActionsScript can control the sound it needs to have a soundChannel defined. The example code creates a variable called controlMusic and data types it as a sound channel. You can then control the sound by simple calling on the variable controlMusic.

var controlMusic:SoundChannel

Add the final example code to the actions panel. You should be familiar with most of this code. You are simple adding event listeners to the stop and play buttons that were created for you. It is the code inside the events that should be new. First when the play button is clicked the sound channel you created earlier is set a Music.play(). remember you earlier defined Music as being equal to the audio file loaded when the .swf is called. So, the code associated with the play button is simple telling the music to play. It would stand to reason that the code associated with the stop button would then simply tell the music to stop. Just, remember that you have to control the sound channel, and not the sound directly.

play_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, playMusic) function playMusic(event:MouseEvent):void{ controlMusic= Music.play() }; stop_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, stopMusic) function stopMusic(event:MouseEvent):void{ controlMusic.stop() };

Press Control-Enter and test the file.

Congratulations, you should now be able to add sound to your website, note that you do not need to make the buttons play music, you have the basic code to make your navigation play a chime when clicked.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and allows you to merge several images together to create an incredible range of tones and detail, that simulates what the human eye sees.

They are especially useful in low light situations or areas where you have two subjects lit differently, such as a bright window or a night time scene, but they can enhance many photographs by allowing you to manipulate more information in the highlights, midtones and shadows.

Step 1: Taking the Picture

For my HDR image I decided to take a night time photo of some steps. I used a tripod so my image would remain consistent for all three shots. Because we are placing photos on top of each other, any movement would create a ghost effect where the images are different. If you have a remote shutter, you can use that to further help keep the camera steady, especially when using long exposures like in the case of this night time scene.

Keep the f-stop the same, changing only the shutter speed for each image. This process is known as bracketing and you'll need to put your camera into manual mode to do it.

You may take as many exposures as you like, but I am keeping mine simple with just 3:

It was a windy night and my tripods not very sturdy, so the focus on these is going to be a little soft.

My first shot is underexposed, with at F13 for 2 seconds

My second shot is more accurately exposed at f13 for 4 seconds

My final shot is very bright, shot at f13 for 10 seconds Now I'm ready to start merging my photos.

Step 2: Merging your photos using Photoshop's HDR tool

For this process, you may want to use either Photoshop CS3 or Bridge, which comes with Photoshop.

To use Photoshop:

Go to > File > Automate > Merge to HDR…

At this point, a box will open that allows you to either select open files or browse for files on your computer. If you use select open files make sure you don't have anything extra opened. If you are using RAW images I recommend browsing for files so you don't have to covert these before you merge them.

Once you click OK Photoshop will begin open this window you. Don't worry if the image doesn't look very good at this point. Change the file to 16 bits/Channel and select OK. Photoshop will merge the images.

Select Local Adaptation and Click on the Arrow by Toning Curve and Histogram

.

By adding points to this curve and adjusting it into a simple S curve, I can create contrast without losing too much information. Just play with the curves until you get an image that you looks the best. If you accidently create a point you don't want, simply click it and hit delete.

At this point, my image looks something like this:

Now this image has a very smokey quality to it.

This can be helped by going into Image AdjustmentsHue/Saturation or by clicking Ctrl + U ( Command + U for you Mac users) and pushing the saturation up just slightly.

I also thought the midtones turned out a little washed, so I went into ImageAdjustments Levels and slid the middle slider to the right to darken those.

As a final step go to ImageMode 8 bits/Channel - Here is my image.

HDR image Middle Exposure

Looking back on these images, I should have taken more bright exposures, to get my full range of shadows.

Either way-I hope your HDR images come out looking great!

Feel free to send me some examples of your own (and hopefully better looking) HDR images.