This page helps you create a transition effect commonly known in traditional film and video editing as an iris pattern. The iris pattern begins with a small initial opening position from the center of the image and expands to cover the entire picture frame. The next picture is being revealed inside the iris pattern while it is expanding and erasing the current picture.

Common iris patterns include geometric shapes such as circles, stars, polygons, etc. This effect looks best with patterns having symmetrical geometry. The shape used in this iris pattern is a simple rectangle or square depending on the dimensions of your image. A transparent border pattern can be specified to enhance the transition with additional easing effect.

This geometric transition effect is very popular in traditional commercial digital video and film. Its use can be very effective for web applications to deliver your message and capture attention where space or bandwidth is limited.

The Linux-based ActionScripting engine behind this page generates the graphic file in industry standard Flash swf format that is supported by most modern browsers, and is compatible to all Flash player versions.

All you need to do is to supply the images and set the appropriate parameters and the final Flash file is generated including appropriate HTML codes with just one click. You do not need to know Flash or its scripting language. You do not have to use any traditional desktop Flash tools to create this effect.

For best results, all images should have the same size (identical width and height). If an image is smaller or larger than the referenced width and height, depending upon the quality of the images, artifacts may become visible if any image scaling is produced.

Smaller number of columns should have longer transition time. The bidirectional option alternates the movement direction of the transition. If you want smoother transition effect and more resolution for the delay parameters, a larger frame rate will do the trick. But please beware that frame rates larger than 30 fps require more bandwidth and processor utilization. The default setting uses one column and one row without border.

1. Width of image   
(default 240 pixels)

2. Height of image   
(default 160 pixels)

3. Delay before each column   
(default 100 ms per column)

4. Duration of image   
(default 1000 ms per image)

5. Transition (column) time   
(default 2000 ms per column)

6. Frame rate   
(default 20 fps, frames per second)

Click to generate the Flash image file with your current choice of parameters in a separate window.

The following Flash image demonstrates this effect with five small sample images. The duration of each image is set at 2 seconds and the transition time is 1 second, respectively.


You can specify up to ten different images to create this Flash animation effect. Images can be stored in either .gif, .jpg or .png format. Only .gif and .png format support true transparency.

11. Number of images    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

12. Enter the URL of your images or leave blank to use the following default images for testing your parameter settings. Use this option if you want to add Flash effects to your web site contents. A valid URL has the form http://www.yourdomain.com/yourimage.jpg.

Click here if you want to upload images from your computer to this Linux server. Each uploaded image is limited to 96K bytes.

The generated Flash swf file will be automatically removed from the server in approximately one hour. Right click on the apppropriate link and choose "Save Link As..." or "Save Target As..." to download the Flash or HTML file to your computer.