October 2010
Beginner
453 pages
15h 52m
English
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Chapter 9. Drawing with Pixels
IN THIS CHAPTER
Bitmap Caching
The BitmapData Class
Blend Modes
Bitmap Filters
Color Effects
Image Encoding and Saving
Adding Functionality to Your Color Picker
What’s Next?
Though largely known for its focus on vector assets, ActionScript also has an impressive arsenal of bitmap compositing features—options that work by layering, blending, and filtering pixel-based assets. ActionScript can even take a snapshot of vectors and manipulate the snapshot—behind the scenes with no loss in vector quality—giving you additional compositing options and, in many cases, performance gains.
Although it’s unrealistic to expect ActionScript to achieve the feature breadth and depth of a pixel-editing application like Adobe Photoshop, you really can accomplish quite a bit with it. Among others, ActionScript features include a set of blend modes (darken, lighten, multiply, screen, and others that closely resemble Photoshop blend modes), basic filters (like drop shadow, bevel, and blur, akin to Photoshop layer styles), and advanced filter effects (like convolution and displacement mapping, similar to Photoshop filters).
Today, ActionScript 3.0’s speed and efficiency make bitmap manipulation practical in more processor-intensive scenarios than ever before. In this chapter, we’ll discuss several ways to add pixel pushing to your projects, including:
Bitmap Caching. Moving pixels on screen is a lot more efficient than recalculating the math required to display moving vectors every time ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.