I'd be worried about using Flash due to its longevity/compatibility with mobile/tablet.

Now that you mention shoes, another one comes to mind:

http://www.shoesofprey.com/

Quotehttp://www.shoesofprey.com/

ding, ding, ding!!! I think that is IT!!! and it looks to be javascript and CSS(?)

I read someone say...

QuoteIn this site www.shoesofprey.com, I could see in most of the places, only JQuery slideshows have been used for displaying and the content is very less. If you know PHP very well, then it wont be a problem for you to create a website similar to that. I am sure you can develop that site on your own.

...in fact, I think all this code is viewable (if you just view source) but I'm not much for reading code.  But I'm pretty sure everything is there, if you knew what you were looking at. 

The company said it was done in house and is not for sale:( 

But maybe it is enough to at least figure out how to do it.

>cocomyles.com

fwiw the concepts seem quite do-able in php, and maybe through javascript too. I would assume they have a grayscale image as the 'base' of a design, and the colours are just overlays... as are the accessories. the main drawback with php is it'll be generated server side unless you cache all the permutations of design.

I've seen much simpler php classes for engravings and other text manipulation, this image processing just adds a few layers of complexity.

>shoesofprey.com

their images are cached. when you click on a custom product, it fetches 10 or so images so you can rotate the product, it isn't 'on the fly'.

One easy way to test may be conversion from raster > vector > raster.... or jpg to svg to jpg, that seems like an easy way to at least test colour variations.

Hee hee, nice to know that my compulsive shopping tendencies turn out to be useful!

Buckworks, I actually was counting on you for a solution!

Bol, I'll relay your ideas to my guy, thank you.