Ok so after some investigation of the colorMatrix class i can across a handy little tweening engine called TweenerLite. If you are familiar with the as3 Tweener classes by caurina then you will find that this tweener works in a similar fashion.

 The power of this Tweener lies in its ability to tween filters such as blurs, glows, drop shadows, bevels and also image effects like contrast, colorization, brightness, saturation, hue, and threshold. Check it out. 

 http://blog.greensock.com/tweenfilterliteas3/