Welcome to the minihomepage of PHP-FlashImageConverter

What is PHP-FlashImageConverter?
PHP-FlashImageConverter is a rather simple php-script that runs on your server and can be used as an interface for macromedia flash to load any jpeg, gif or bmp file (in any size needed) on your server or anywhere else on the internet into flash. And the most important thing: it's free! :-)
After I did the initial version of I found another php script on the net called "swfImageProxy" doing basically the same but with support of more file types.
Check it out at the swfImageProxy homepage

What do I need it for?
Since flash MX it is possible to dynamically load progressive jpeg images into a flash movie.
Unfortunately progressive jpegs are the only images flash can load at runtime, therefore an an interface between the macromedia flash movie and the image to load is needed, to transform other image formats or interlaced jpegs into progressive jpegs.

What do I need on my server to run the php script?
You need PHP 4.x and the gdLibray in a recent version (gd > 2.x recommended).
see http://www.zend.com/manual/ref.image.php and http://www.boutell.com/gd/ for more information.

Where can I download it?
the script can be downloaded here:
PHP-FlashImageConverter.zip (please consider the file readme.txt included in the zip archive for installation instructions)
A downloaded version of the demo implementation will be available in a view days

What image formats can be converted?
PHP-FlashImageConverter converts GIF, JPEG (interlaced and progressive), PNG and windows BMP files into progressive JPEGS (input image file formats are depending on your GD Library installation!).

What else can PHP-FlashImageConverter do?
right now the functions of PHP-FlashImageConverter are limited to only a small amount of resizing funtions. As there are:

• resizing images by a given factor (e.g. 0.5 for half-size, 2 for double-size of the orginal image)
• resizing images to a given width while keeping the original aspect ratio
• resizing images to fit into a given rectangle while keeping the original aspect ratio

can I see a demo of PHP-FlashImageConverter somewhere?
sure, here you go

How to use the demo imeplementation:

1. enter URL of the image you want to load into flash (can be a gif, jpeg or windows-bmp image)
2. set either the "resize-factor", "resize to width" or the "max width" in combination with the "max height" values to your needs
   Note: the values for these fields in this demo have defined maximum values which can not be exceeded (max resize factor is 5, max width/height values are 1000px)
3. click on the "load image" button to serverside resize the image an send it to flash