FireMonkey Image Effects

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The FireMonkey built-in ImageFX engine provides over 50 GPU-powered effects. These effects are nonvisual components that can be found in the Effects category on the Tool Palette. All the provided effects can be simply enabled or disabled by setting the Enabled flag from the Form Designer, or programmatically.

Almost all the effects have specific properties that you can customize depending on the application. For example, all transition effects have the Progress property, which is used to set the amount of progress (in percentages, %) through the transition from the first texture to the second texture. The specified properties can be found in the Object Inspector when the effect is selected in the Structure View. All numeric properties of any effect can be animated to provide a gradual evolution in time. Image effects can also be triggered.

FireMonkey effects are built using shader filters. The shaders modify pixels, either individually or in concert with others, to achieve various visual effects. These effects are not limited to bitmap image data; effects can be applied to the pixels of any 2D control in the user interface. Effects can be used at run time or at design time to change the look of the user interface of the application. The FireMonkey effects do not disable any controls or functionalities when they are applied.

For more information about applying a FireMonkey effect, see Applying FireMonkey Image Effects.

Kinds of Image Effects

The provided subclasses of TEffect fall into the categories listed in the following table. Each category is further described and illustrated later in this topic.

Effects that modify pixels individually	Effects that consider the neighbors of a pixel	Additive effects	Effects that modify the image as a whole	Transition effects
TInvertEffect TColorKeyAlphaEffect TMaskToAlphaEffect TMonochromeEffect TBloomEffect TGloomEffect TContrastEffect THueAdjustEffect TFillRGBEffect TFillEffect	Blur TBlurEffect TDirectionalBlurEffect TBoxBlurEffect TGaussianBlurEffect TRadialBlurEffect Distortions TBandedSwirlEffect TBandsEffect TMagnifyEffect TPinchEffect TRippleEffect TSmoothMagnifyEffect TSwirlEffect TWaveEffect TWrapEffect	TGlowEffect TInnerGlowEffect TReflectionEffect TShadowEffect TEmbossEffect TPaperSketchEffect TPencilStrokeEffect TPixelateEffect TSepiaEffect TSharpenEffect TToonEffect TBevelEffect	TAffineTransformEffect TCropEffect TNormalBlendEffect TPerspectiveTransformEffect TTilerEffect	TBandedSwirlTransitionEffect TBlindTransitionEffect TBloodTransitionEffect TBlurTransitionEffect TBrightTransitionEffect TCircleTransitionEffect TCrumpleTransitionEffect TDissolveTransitionEffect TDropTransitionEffect TFadeTransitionEffect TLineTransitionEffect TMagnifyTransitionEffect TPixelateTransitionEffect TRippleTransitionEffect TRotateCrumpleTransitionEffect TSaturateTransitionEffect TShapeTransitionEffect TSlideTransitionEffect TSwipeTransitionEffect TSwirlTransitionEffect TWaterTransitionEffect TWaveTransitionEffect TWiggleTransitionEffect

Effects that modify pixels individually

These effects typically apply changes to color. Each pixel color can be considered on its own. The table below shows some of this kind of effect:

Effect	Result	Description	Effect	Result	Description
None		No effects applied.	TMonochromeEffect		Grayscale transformation.
TInvertEffect		Inverts the color of each pixel	TContrastEffect		Adjusting contrast
THueAdjustEffect		Adjusting hue	Fill effects TFillRGBEffect or TFillEffect		Color filling, either preserving alpha or completely overwriting.

Effects that consider the neighbors of a pixel

This type of effect is applied using algorithms that use the neighbors of a pixel to define the new value of the pixel. The table below shows some of this kind of effect:

Blur effects

Effect	Result	Description	Effect	Result	Description
None		No effects applied.	TGaussianBlurEffect		Gaussian blur
TBoxBlurEffect		Box blur	TDirectionalBlurEffect		Directional blur
TRadialBlurEffect		Radial blur	TBlurEffect		Stack Blur

Various distortions

Effect	Result	Description	Effect	Result	Description
None		No effects applied.	Swirls effects TSwirlEffect and TBandedSwirlEffect		Swirls the input image.
TWaveEffect		Applies a wave patterns	TEmbossEffect		Outlines the input image
TPixelateEffect		Reduces the input details	TMagnifyEffect		Magnifying glass.

Effects that modify the image as a whole

This kinds of effect applies geometric changes over the input image. The table below shows some of this kind of effect:

Effect	Result	Description	Effect	Result	Description
None		No effects applied.	TCropEffect		Crops the input image.
TAffineTransformEffect		Rotates and scales the input image.	TPerspectiveTransformEffect		3D perspective
TNormalBlendEffect		Overlies two images. This work when the overlay has some transparency.	TTilerEffect		Tiles the input image

Additive effects

This kind of effect affects the images by adding new elements to the original image. The elements can be added to the edges of the image or to the entire image. The table below shows some of this kind of effect:

Effect	Opaque image	Image with transparent areas	Description
None			No effects applied.
TGlowEffect			Adds a glowing band
|TInnerGlowEffect			Adds a glowing band in the interior of the nontransparent areas.
TShadowEffect			Adds shadow to the nontransparent areas.
TReflectionEffect			Adds reflection to the entire image.
TBevelEffect			Adds a bevel to the entire image.

Transition effects

FireMonkey includes over twenty image transition effects, in which source pixels are progressively transformed into a target bitmap image, from simple fades to fancy banded swirls. The progress of the transformation is deterministic and can be set to an arbitrary percentage. This percentage can be animated to transition over time. To animate the progress of the transformation, see Apply an Animation Effect to a Property of an Image Effect.

The table below shows some animated transitions:

Transition	Result	Transition	Result
TBandedSwirlTransitionEffect		TCircleTransitionEffect
TFadeTransitionEffect		TMagnifyTransitionEffect

FireMonkey Image Sample Program

The ShaderFilters sample program demonstrates many of the FireMonkey image effects, except the additive effects and the basic stack blur.

See Also

• FireMonkey Animation Effects
• Using FireMonkey Image Effects

Samples

• FireMonkey Image Filters sample