I recently had to create a simple Flash application that allowed the user to ‘erase’ an image using their mouse. I couldn’t find any examples of the exact effect I wanted, so I cobbled together my own. The effect I came up with is similar to using the eraser tool in Photoshop.

Demo

Click and drag your mouse on the image below to erase it. Press the reset button to start over.

 

Download

Download FLA (includes code comments explaining how everything works)

Credits

My effect is based on the masking techniques shared by surferboy in an Ultrashock forum discussion and a Flash & Math tutorial explaining how to use Flash’s drawing API to draw using the mouse.

The gorgeous photographs used in this demo are by wabberjocky and ex.libris and are available under a Creative Commons license.

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