By: John Paul - FlashNewz.com

While Flash can be a great tool for creating stunning animation for your projects, it's sometimes best to leave the graphic to the experts. Saying this, we are going to be using Photoshop 7 to help us create a stunning TV static effect for our Flash movie.

Here is the example I created for this tutorial. If you click through the items you can see how the static fades in and out.

First, we need to open Photoshop 7. Go ahead, I'll give it time to load before I continue.

Ok, now that we have Photoshop we are going to create a new file (File>New). You can make the image as large or as small as you need for your project. For this particular project I made my image 200x200 px.

Now, with your rectangle tool, draw a square that fills the area of your image. You can use any kind of style you wish for your box depending on how you want the background of your TV Static to appear. I used a predefined style downloaded from Adobe.

Once you have the shape defined, add another blank layer to your image(Layer>New>Layer...). The reason you are doing this is so you can merge your existing layer that contains our box and blending with the new layer to flatten it.

Now select the blank layer and link it to the layer with your box. To do this you need to open your Layers menu (Windows>Layers). Click on the blank layer and with this layer selected click on the empty box beside the eye on your box layer. You should see an icon that looks like links of a chain. This will make the layers link. Now we are going to merge the layers (CTRL+E).

Now save your File. It's easiest to save it as a JPG file. It's important to save the files with the same name and a different number to save time when importing your effect into Flash.

Now it's time to add the Razzle Dazzle.

To make the effect of the static TV we are going to simply add noise.

With your layer select selected go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise...

For my TV Effect I check the Guassian Distribution with the Monochromatic unchecked. You can change the options if desired.

Now that you have your Noise menu open slide your fader in increments up the scale and you can see how it produces the TV effect. If you increase the Noise in steady increments (IE: 3,6,9) the fade will not look correct.

For my file I used the current numbers for Noise.

0 (tv1.jpg)
3 (tv2.jpg)
6.3 (tv3.jpg)
10.7 (tv4.jpg)
13.13 (tv5.jpg)
17.4 (tv6.jpg)
22.78 (tv7.jpg)
23.75 (tv8.jpg)
31.4 (tv9.jpg)
40 (tv10.jpg)

If you want a longer or smoother static effect I suggest playing with these numbers and exporting them.

Make sure to save each increment as a JPG file with the numbers increasing for each one.

Now for the last step. Importing into Flash.

Open Flash.

Click on the blank frame in your new movie and hit CTRL+R, which will open your Import Menu.

Find the files on your computer and hit Open. Since you saved them in order it will open the browser window and ask if you would like to import the entire series. Hit yes.

To complete your TV Static effect you are going to make the effect fade in, which you have already done, and Fade out.

Create a new layer (Insert>Layer)

On the layer with your current Static, highlight the frames ( only the ones with pictures in them ) and right click. Then hit "Copy Frames"

On your new layer click on the blank key frame, right click, and hit Paste Layers. Delete the last frame of this layer by selecting the last frame and hitting Shift+F5.

Now you want to Cut the last of the remaining layers and past it at the end of your main frame. Repeat this process until you have cut all of the frames and paste them in order. Once this is complete you can delete the empty layer.

Now hit F12 and you should have a nice TV Static Effect!

Have Questions? Click here and post them in the forum!