Welcome to another Sponsored Pixel2life Studios review! Today we are going to look at an amazing new Flash Component by Flashloaded.com called photoFlow. I've seen a ton of generic Flash photo galleries and chances are you have as well, but nothing like this at all, in terms of simple good lucks, robust functionality and customizable options. You can use this component as a scrollable gallery or even as a slideshow presentation. Check out some of the features you've got with this:

1. Easily update images using the Component Inspector, ActionScript or an XML file
2. Adjustable flip speed, spacing between stacked images and image size
3. Customizable perspective view and reflections
4. Option to flip images as a slideshow
5. Add links/hyperlinks to each image
6. ActionScript events to perform an action when an image has loaded, is selected, etc…
7. Images can be external or included in the library
8. Mouse wheel image flipping (Windows only)
9. Optionally display a name for each image
10. Option to set the number of images to preload
11. Option to automatically scale images to fit or to fill the defined size
12. Zoom in on selected image or on all images on mouse over
13. photoFlow can open on a pre-defined image
14. Customizable background color and opacity
15. Option to start flipping from left-to-right or right-to-left
16. Supports sound effects for image flipping
17. Built-in preloader
18. Light weight (weighs only 18kb with the scrollbar)

You can read the complete feature list and descriptions HERE!

I spent about 30 minutes playing around with this in gallery mode, it's really quite appealing and easy to use. Many gallery type scripts tend to be clunky but photoFlow is actually FUN to use. You can flip around through the photos and zoom in, use the scroll wheel and play around. Be sure to check out the photoFlow product page for live demos that look like this:

This really is a complete turn-key gallery, and at 18kb including the scrollbar, you're not even putting a dent in the page load of your site. It even has a pre-loader built right in, so you don't even have to mess with that. In terms of requirements, you can edit this in Macromedia Flash 8 or Adobe Flash CS3 and it runs under Flash Player 8 or 9 utilizing ActionScript 2.0. Here's a look at the Component Inspector for photoFlow:

How's THAT for customizing options?

If you are looking for a complete and easy to use image gallery for your Flash projects, I HIGHLY recommend you check out Flashloaded's photoFlow. I should also mention that's not all these guys make either… scroll to the bottom of the product page and you'll find a HUGE list of other awesome Flash products they make at very affordable prices considering the HOURS of development time you'll save with these.

Enjoy!
Dan