ok, whats the best way to import bitmaps into flash? i never have any luck with that trace bitmap stuff. i mean it comes in and looks great, but the results are always 128K+ anyone have any tips on this? i have been messing around with decreasing the number of colors in the image down a bunch before importing, etc. but it seems like i always just end up using the bitmap as a guide layer, and tracing over top of it by hand. i came up with the idea of possibly doing an edge detect on the image and seeing if i could save it as a dxf and import just the paths into flash, but i haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Fur, are you wanting to turn them into vectors to animate them or to reduce the size? Chris

mostly to reduce the size. my artistic skills are next to nil, so i like to bring in bitmaps i have obtained from other sources. i don't have the skills to sketch them out in flash by hand.

drats, i just tried the .eps trick, and flash 4 doesn't want to load the .eps files created by paint shop pro 6.

Well you can use jpgs in flash if you just want to import small graphic files. Chris

yah, but they are too big :-(

Fur, why don't you just use the Trace Bitmap function in Flash? Import the JPG or TIF and Trace Bitmap it. Try different settings. The default Trace Bitmap settings are very bad. -Sanv

cuz it always sucks. what do you recommend?

Hmmm. You could try Adobe Streamline if you're going to be doing more tracing. If this is the only one you're doing and it's not too complicated you might as well trace it by hand. Else get Streamline. -SanV

Trace bitmap is better for images with lots of solid color and little to no shading. I tried tracing a 138k jpg of a colored pencil drawing I did and came back with a 5mb vector image... The best option is to import them as png's and set Flash to save them internally as jpgs. Then tweak around with the compression levels till you get what you want. I use png if I want some transparancy. Like if I'm importing a Possette http://www.atless.net/~arcady/flash_work/gallery.html for example. (done for a school assignment, don't bug me on the bad design please. :) ) Otherwise do the jpg compression in photoshop/psp/fireworks before importing. Or import a bmp (or PICT for Mac people). Flash can only import eps images from Illustrator 6 or less (and sometimes 7). So check how PSP is saving them... For the best non-flash vector results you want Freehand. Flash and Freehand are somewhat 'tweaked' to work together well.

Oh, my 5mb vector image is online as well: http://www.atless.net/~arcady/flash_work/kitty.html her swf file was around 384kb or something close to that...

Trace Bitmap will usually result in large filesizes, if you use a setting that preserves the quality at all You can optimize your bitmaps in FireWorks or with the free tool from Jpegwizard and use them as is Look at the download speed and quality of these: Hawk