MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-FLASH, Use Manual

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92 Using Symbols, Instances, and Library Assets
To change the color and transparency of an instance:
1.
Select the instance on the Stage and select Window > Properties.
2.
In the Property inspector, select one of the following options from the Color pop-up menu:
Brightness
adjusts the relative lightness or darkness of the image, measured on a scale
from black (–100%) to white (100%). Click the triangle and drag the slider or enter a
value in the text box to adjust brightness.
Tint colors the instance with the same hue. Use the Tint slider in the Property inspector to
set the tint percentage, from transparent (0%) to completely saturated (100%). Click the
triangle and drag the slider or enter a value in the text box to adjust tint. To select a color,
enter red, green, and blue values in the respective text boxes, or click the color box and
select a color from the pop-up window or click the Color Picker button.
Alpha
adjusts the transparency of the instance, from transparent (0%) to completely
saturated (100%). To adjust the alpha value, click the triangle and drag the slider or enter
a value in the text box.
Advanced separately adjusts the red, green, blue, and transparency values of an instance.
This is most useful when you want to create and animate subtle color effects on objects
such as bitmaps. The controls on the left let you reduce the color or transparency values
by a specified percentage. The controls on the right let you reduce or increase the color or
transparency values by a constant value.
The current red, green, blue, and alpha values are multiplied by the percentage values, and
then added to the constant values in the right column, producing the new color values.
For example, if the current red value is 100, setting the left slider to 50% and the right
slider to 100 produces a new red value of 150 ([100 x .5] + 100 = 150).
You can also change the color of an instance using the ActionScript Color object. For detailed
information on the Color object, see Color in
ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference
.
Swapping one instance for another
You can assign a different symbol to an instance to display a different instance on the Stage
and preserve all the original instance properties, such as color effects or button actions.
For example, suppose you’re creating a cartoon with a rat symbol for your character, but
decide to change the character to a cat. You could replace the rat symbol with the cat symbol
and have the updated character appear in roughly the same location in all your frames.
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The Advanced settings in the Effect panel implement the function (a * y+ b)= x where
a is the percentage specified in the left set of text boxes, y is the color of the original
bitmap, b is the value specified in the right set of text boxes, and x is the resulting
effect (between 0 and 255 for RGB, and 0 and 100 for alpha transparency).