Animating a Nokia Cell Phone Theme with Carbide.ui - Breaking down the effects
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These effects include:
Adjust Channels
This effect uses red, green and blue values to alter the color of the original image.
Apply Color
This option allows you to add variable quantities of up to three selected colors - red, green or blue - to the image.
Black And White
As the name suggests, this converts the image to one-bit black and white mode. Sliders are provided to control the threshold at which the image is converted and the degree of blending between the original and modified image, each of which can be animated or left static.
Contrast
The contrast effect does what it suggests, progressively adjusting the balance between dark and light areas of the image.
Convolution
One of the most impressive animation effects, Convolution uses Blur, Sharpen, Edge and Emboss filters to modify the image.
Grayscale
Converts the image to greyscale mode. Depending on the source image, this option can also create effective animations.
Invert
Converts all the image's colors to their complementary colors, creating intense and dramatic color shifts.
Moving Layer
Designed primarily to create highlight effects by shifting the position of one layer laid on top of another, the Moving Layer effect can also be used to move a single layer.
Noise
The Noise effect introduces speckled distortion into the image, which can be used to create the impression of a dramatic shifting landscape.
Saturation
The Saturation effect adjusts the intensity of the colors in the image.
Solarize
Solarization is the inversion of the image's colors, which are blended with the original.
Each of these effects have both Still and Animated options, available through their respective tabs in the Properties pane. To animate an effect, choose the Animated tab and click in one or more of the available Animated check boxes. Most of the effects have settings that can be adjusted to modify the appearance of the animation, and each Animate check box has an associated Settings button which opens controls for adjusting the animation's timing and repetition. The animation can be viewed by using the Play, Pause and Stop controls in the timeline window immediately below the main editor view.
A more complex and varied animation can be created by simply adding a new layer, pasting a new image into it, and activating a transition between them. To add a layer, you click on the Add Layer button in the toolbar of the Layers pane. A new layer called layer 1 is created and highlighted.
Switching between the original background layer and the new layer 1 reveals that they both contain the same image. The simplest way to place a new image on layer 1 is to copy the image to the clipboard in the source application, and then right-click on the layer 1 label in the Layers pane and choose paste. Animated effects can now be applied independently to the original and new layers.
Further layers, images and effects can be incorporated to build up complex and sophisticated animations. When you're happy with your animation, you incorporate it into the theme by closing the Animation Editor tabbed window. Carbide.ui will prompt you to save your modifications, and the new animations will now be visible in the main theme pain whenever the background is selected.
Next: More effects >>
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