Had for an photo art project using two images. The first image would be a black and white photo of some place where there is normally a lot of activity (a cafe, for example), this picture wouldn’t have any people in it. The second picture (color) would be taken from the very same angle/position except this one would have a lot more activity in it.
On a website, the black and white picture would be the default, but when a user moves their cursor over the photo, hints of the other photo begin to surface (most likely dense at the center and more diffused near the edges. A variable density effect would be cool too)
Is a project like this possible in Jquery (preferred because I know some Javascript), or would I have to use Flash? Any other ways to do it?
I think whatever you exactly want to do with images, pixels and colors, flash can be a solution. It has many colorfilters and possibilities to handle such a project.
On the other hand if you already know how to code javascript, flash won’t be too hard as they are both ECMAScripts. If you don’t want a heavy project, some basic knowledge will do it.
If you want to try the flash way, here is the reference to start with for Actionscript 3 (I think you could also use AS2, it also has colormatrix and bitmapdata and stuff):
Reference.
Also, read the parts
BitmapData,
ColorMatrix
and
ColorMatrixFilter.
I’m not sure what jQuery can do, but for sure flash is capable of these image manipulations. Even on a pixel-level.
If you are fine to have embedded flash on your site. If you choose this way, and have more questions on how to start it, feel free to ask. I hope this gives some ideas to start with.