Cut out pic ture from Photshop into Flash

Hello everyone. I have a question that might be more of a Photoshop question but I dont know. I am sure someone will be able to answer it. First of all I am using Photoshop 7 and Flash MX.

I have a jpeg of a boat motor which has a white background on it. But the problem is I dont want the white background because I need to overlay this picture over part of another. I guess I could ( within flash) just Mask out the motor and use it that way. But my question is how can I cut out the motor in PS7 and bring it into Flash? I guess this results would be the same, but I would really like to be able to do this from within PS7 if possible. I dont need to know how to cut out something with the PS7 tools, I know how to do that. My question basically is how to I export it or copy over to Flash.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

pC

You'll have to save it in photoshop as a PNG or a GIF as these support transparency.

Though you could import it into Flash as a JPG and then select the image on the stage and choose: Modify > Break Apart
This allows you to just select the white pixels and delete them. (if you do this you should probably 'Group' all of the broken apart pixels together)

Thanks for your quick reply..!!! I tried using a transparent PNG and it worked fine...the only concern (thought not really for this project--because it is a small project) is that the file size quadrupled in size...The JPG was about 11 K and the PNG was about 48 K..WOW! What a difference!!!

Is there any better way to mask out a pic in PS7 and bring it into Flash MX???


Thanks again for your help!!!!!

_pC

nope. when you use photographs, expect to get fat

thats strange. i thought png's where about the same as a jpg.

no they are not.... U can optimize jpegs... but with PNGs no such luck... all u can do is save as an 8 bit or 24 bit PNG

Regs

so wouldja say a 24bit png would be similar in size to a jpeg at 100%?

havent tried it... but it wud be...

the advantage og pngs is that they support alpha transparency... hence they are better than gif's but... since IE doesnt support alpha transparency... png's never picked up momentum.

regs

they ARE great for masking in flash tho. Not overdoing it of course.

I don't understand why IE wouldn't want to use pngs... best of both worlds i say. especially with all these copyright issues over gif and jpg going on.

I say scoop the greedy bastages

ok... i just tried it.. tried saving a PSD as both jpeg at 100 quality and PNG 24 bit.

size of jpeg at 100% 366.8 Kb
size of PNG 24 bit 745.5 Kb

you can put in a javascript which tells IE to start using alpha transparency but only works IE5.5+

yeah that alpha sure adds up.