raster graphics in flash

[Coffee Cat]

Got a problem with raster graphics. I am fairly comfortable with making sites that excite me and feel real slick and effective in flash when it comes to vector graphis, whether they're made in flash, freehand, or swift... but raster graphics can sometimes become tricky....

For one thing... they never seem to look as good in the swf as they do beforehand, whether its in the original gif, jpg, or psd file, or in flash upon import.... for some reason the published file looks like its on an "off" resolution percentage in photoshop (66%). I've seen other sites where the photographs look fine, so i must be missing something.... higher resolutions mainly seem to add up file size quicker than they improve appearance.

Also, caching them can be a pain in the ass.

Often times the movie needs to hault as it pulls in the graphic the first time... is there anyway to prevent this hiccup?... i've seen many flash intros that use decent photos in them so there must be a way not only to make the photos better looking, but keeping them small enough to pop up on screen with ease and/or preload them, not just to the browser, but to the video card cache... or sumthin'

Anyone know what im talking about and/or have a solution?

Thanks in advance
Coffee Cat

[Ramses Design]

well actually u can just resample em using photshop it is pretty easy and can save up some file size

[Coffee Cat]

Yeah, that's cool.... I know how to resample and export in a variety of different file saving vs quality ways for the web. But sometimes it looks even worse in flash... most of the time it does..... and if you go to a higher res image, it doesn't seem to make it look any better. Thats all I am saying.

I think the resampling is a way for me to solve the hiccuping of caching the images... and i tried throwing the cache problem away for a second when upping the res. just to see if the quality would become clear.... but it didn't.... I will, of course, want to use as small a file size as possible in the end.... that I know and know how to do, but i can't figure out why the images don't look as good once pulled into a swf either way.

[lesli_felix]

Check to see that there has been no accidental resizing. Is the image the same size as it was when you imported it, or has it been squashed/scaled to fit in the movie. Also, resizing the movie can have an effect. When viewing the movie, right click and make sure 100% is checked instead of show all.

[Tippa]

Not sure this is the soulution to rastergfx-in-flash problems, but I always save my rasterimages in bmp, and then import them to flash...Flash compress images, and that way I dont compress them twice...

[puresin]

tippa's right, if you optimize psd files as .jpg or else and
import into flash, they get compressed twice.

nevertheless, i'd decide against importing .bmp files.

optimize them with adobe's image ready as far as you can
while they're still looking good. import them into flash,
and set the .jpg compression ratio in the publishing
options on 100%. this way flash won't compress them farther.
if you let flash compress your image data, you'll have no
influence on image quality and size as you have when using
image ready.

you'd need no more then max. 92 dpi resolution, because
windows pc's display a max. screen resolution of 92 dpi
and mac's 72 dpi. any higher resolution will increase
file size but not image quality.

try to slice your .jpg's before importing them into flash.
this way you can reuse bitmaps several times without
loading the entire image again and again, besides you'll
be able to get less complete file size as you would when
saving them in one file. try different file formats and
compression ratio for different slices.

caching maybe a problem when the surfers use a bad
configured proxy server.

try preloading the graphics (there are some very nice
tutorials about advanced preloading around here).
those hiccups happen because flash streams the image data.
when preloaded, those images don't need to be streamed and
the movie plays fluidly.