I find it both amazing and amusing how something so simple can become all the rage. First it was laser printers and fonts that looked like dot matrix lettering (thank god that passed quickly), more recently the Ken Burn's Effect which is the panning and zooming of still images to give a sense of motion or when combined with video a sense that everything is video and now Apple's reflection which is when you have something like a product shot and a faded reflection of it below it. Of course there have been many more such "rages" over the years many of them are fads and quickly disappear. However, some become classics and last for years if not forever.

The Ken Burn's effect is one such classic, it just makes still images look nice, it makes them more interesting and it makes them live. The Apple reflection is another one that is a classic. It looks nice; it makes a nice presentation for whatever you reflect be it a product shot, screen shot, photograph, button, text, etc.

While the Apple reflection is nice and it isn't hard to do it still can take time, since saving time is what computers were created for it only stands to reason that there should be a quicker way to do the Apple reflection so that it can be used more often with less time and work and for more consistency. This brings us to DMXzone's Flash Image Enhancer Screen Shot. One of its main functions it to take any image and create that Apple like reflection, it does this from within Adobe Dreamweaver using Adobe Flash technology, it in fact turns the image in to a Flash object, yet it does this without actually altering the original image or even making a copy of it. It simply adds the Flash control code to the image HTML coding. Flash Image Enhancer gives you several options for the reflection including transparency and how much of the original object in reflected in the reflection.

However, Flash Image Enhancer doesn't stop there it can also do rounded corners and for this it allows you to choose which of the four corners is rounded and how round they are. For example you can round only the upper right and lower left corners by 15 pixels leaving the upper left and lower right corners square.

Flash Image Enhancer can also add a border and give you control over the borders thickness, position (inside or outside) and color. You can turn a color image in to a grayscale image; you can also blur an image. You can add a drop shadow to your image with control over softness, size, opacity, color, direction and position. Nearly all of the effects have some controls the only ones that don't are grayscale and blur.

But, what is really nifty is you can combine effects. For example you can take a photo and apply a 2 pixel black border with the upper right and lower left corners rounded by 15 pixels. You can then make it grayscale with a 50 percent opacity 35% reflection. The other thing that is cool is that all of the options like borders, grayscale, blur, rounded corners, etc. are shown in the reflection if you are using it See Samples. The only thing that isn't shown on the reflection is the drop shadow.

Flash Image Enhancer is easy to us. Simply install the extension in to Adobe Dreamweaver using the extension manager program. Load Adobe Dreamweaver and create and save a new page or load an existing page. Place your cursor where you want to insert the Flash Image Enhancer enhanced image and then go to Insert > DMXzone > Flash Image Enhancer. The dialog box will popup and you can then choose an image, a link for that image and your options. You can even setup a mouse over effect Screen Shot for it that gives you effects including drop shadow and border. Once you make your choices click ok and your image is inserted. You will have to preview the page in your browser to see the effects. Why do you have to preview in the browser to see the effect? Because only the Flash control code is added to your page. The image be it a JPG, GIF or PNG, etc. isn't actually altered. Only Flash control codes are added to the HTML for the image and so to see it you have to preview it in the browser. What this means is at any time you can go in and edit the JPG, GIF, PNG, etc. save it back over the original image and have the Flash Image Enhancer effects show on the updated image. This is in my opinion very slick.

I also like that it is fully integrated in to Dreamweaver including having its own property inspector. What this means is after you insert an image with Flash Image Enhancer you can click on that image in Dreamweaver and the property inspector will change and provide you with editing and adjustment controls. You can also click on the Edit Advanced button and it will take you back in to the Flash Image Enhancer dialog box.

This is a great extension that is easy to use but also offers some very useful effects for your web images. Here is a perfect example of when a computer can save you time and effort. While I like this extension very much I do have a complaint.

The image size option allows you to set the width and the height of the image (these fields are automatically entered when you select and image, but you can adjust them up or down to resize the image). However, there is no option to maintain the aspect ratio when you change the height or the width. So if you have an original image of say 640 x 480 and you want to change the width to 100 you have to do the math to get the proper amount to set the height. A maintain aspect ratio check box would be very nice. The resizing of the image is handled by Flash and so it has all of the advantages and disadvantages that come with it. The work-a-round is to make sure your images are of the size you want them displayed and not to use the image size controls to resize them.

Flash Image Enhancer is a great product. It saves a lot of time and really allows you to add basic but useful effects to your web page images. Oh, and I almost forgot with the exception of the border effects all of the others will work with the images transparency. So, if you have a transparent GIF or PNG file the drop shadow, reflection, grayscale and blur will work with that transparency. The border and rounded corners will not however, but this is still nifty and allows for some creative options with images and background, etc.

Needs

A PC running Dreamweaver MX, Dreamweaver MX 2004, Dreamweaver 8, Dreamweaver CS3