Subtitles of the Movie

In the previous movies I demonstrated specific techniques for importing and working with Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks files in Flash. However Flash does support a wide variety of additional file types. These tables from the Flash help panel provides a comprehensive list of all the vector and bitmap file types supported by Flash's import file command for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Notice that here at the top is Illustrator and Photoshop. Illustrator is supported version ten or earlier AutoCAD DXF, bitmap files bmp's for both Windows and Macintosh. Enhanced Windows metafiles from only the Windows operating system freehand versions seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven. Future Splash player SPL files, GIF and animated GIFs, JPEG s and PNGs. Flash Player six an seven SWF files. Windows metafiles. Now you can import the following bitmap files into Flash only if QuickTime four or later is installed. McPaint, pict, QuickTime images, silk and graphics image SGI files, TGA files and TIF files. So to summarize, you can cut and paste external artwork directly onto the Flash stage, or import it to the library or also import it directly to the stage. When importing directly to the stage you have some additional placement controls in the import dialog. Let me review that by importing here to the stage, let's go with a Photoshop import sample. Now notice that here in the import dialog down here in addition to the convert layers to controls are some commands for placing layers at original position or setting stage size to the same size as Photoshop canvas. You'll have both these controls for Illustrator and Photoshop if you import to the stage. When using bitmap files and audio files in your Flash projects it's very important to compress these files. This compression can be done before importing or afterwards in Flash itself when the file is published. Your bitmaps can also be converted to vector shapes using the modify bitmap trace bitmap tool. I have an example of that here. This image was traced yielding this vector based image over here. You can do this again from the modify bitmap trace bitmap command. See my previous movie for a description and explanation of what these setting here will do and what they mean. Converting your bitmaps to vector shapes will creates some interesting visual effects and in some circumstances can reduce file sizes a great deal in your final published SWF file. So that will conclude this section of the course on importing and working with non Flash artwork. Let me now move onto the next section of the course and introduce you to Flash symbols and instances.