Image from Flash to Illustrator

I have a logo that I designed for a friend using Flash CS3. He is now looking to get a banner printed and I decided that Illustrator would be the best program to do it in. I'm trying to get the vector image from Flash into my Illustrator document but I've failed thus far. First I tried Copy and Paste. It copied some of the logo but only a little bit and the colors were way off on it. I've tried exporting from Flash as EPS, SWF, and AI and importing them into Illustrator CS3 and not one of the images has shown up properly. I'm sure that there must be some way to do this. Please help.

i dont have cs3 but from their site you should be able to quite easily

have u tried play around with export layer settings?

That link went to a site about developing for mobile devices. I've tried quite a few different settings. I've exported from Flash as WMF, EMF, EPS, SWF, and even AI. Not one of them would load into Adobe Illustrator properly. It couldn't even open the AI file at all. Apparently Flash doesn't write valid AI files. I finally exported to PDF and was able to import most of the logo in but it's still not a perfect import.

Funny, Ai should import EPS just fine. Suggestion, did you try opening the EPS in Freehand?

If all else fail, copy & paste should do the trick.

Well the colours used in Flash would only be screen colours. I would pick either a Pantone colour (if it is being done offset print) or a colour as close as damn it through CMYK. Ahh the joys of Illustrator :).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jasonsplace

That link went to a site about developing for mobile devices. I've tried quite a few different settings. I've exported from Flash as WMF, EMF, EPS, SWF, and even AI. Not one of them would load into Adobe Illustrator properly. It couldn't even open the AI file at all. Apparently Flash doesn't write valid AI files. I finally exported to PDF and was able to import most of the logo in but it's still not a perfect import.

---

sorry, i meant the "exporting from flash" section on that doc. anyway, i have experienced exporting difficulties from flash (in the older version) to illustrator when the vector is too complex (ex. with complex gradients..etc). Dont know if that's the case for you as well though.

try:
eps,wmf,pdf,dxf(autocad), ai,swf
if noone of them work (wich is a pitty then for adobe) try printing from flash using a print grabber like acrobat and store it as a PDF- try opening that file in AI.

this is a well known and very annoying problem. I combed the forums for days and tried everything I could think of... exporting complex paths from flash to AI botches the vectors and the colors... I guess the only way to go is to wait for Adobe to wake up and release a decent version to compensate for the embarrassing CS3 (it sucks for many other reasons, e.g. the installation bugs scandal).

In a site I cannot now locate, which dealt with the issue, it said that upon contacting Adobe with the question, they were puzzled as to why anyone would want to move from Flash to Illustrator.
-because it is a pain in the ass to draw/sketch in AI, and a pain to adjust colors and do overall editing in Flash... DUH ! !

Anyway - a big conceptual reward to whoever writes something that converts FLA to AI (or SWF->AI, although SWFs are simplified versions of the FLAs, FLA->AI would be better)

hi there,

this works for me...

keep double clicking on the exact piece of artwork until you are all the way in to the graphic that you want to export (ie. so that if you click on a region with the selection tool it selects just that region)

now select all of the elements at once, (drag across all with selection tool) and then choose File>export>export image.

save as an eps, and then open in illustrator, gives you the vector output of the illustration

Yeah I was gonna say that you have to break apart all of your instances/groups or else it won't work no matter what you do. The colors will still be all jacked, because FLash is RGB and AI will be in CMYK, but at least you should get a clean import.

you can convert it from RGB to CMYK in Illustrator.

hi

the problem is not color spectrum conversion so much as vector distortions and random information loss.

the best way I have found is, surprisingly, to print the illustration to a pdf in Flash (using scansoft or maybe adobe distiller-haven't tried the latter) and importing that PDF into illustrator... this too suffers from some artifacts if the vector artwork is very complex.

this is a shameful issue on Adobe's part. I contacted one of their Flash team members and he didn't even know what I was talking about. Illustrator is bad for freehand/wacom drawing (as was Freehand, ironically...) and people just use Flash. However, Flash sucks in uniform manipulations - it is, as a graphic tool, very primitive. So it makes sense to be able to seamlessly move back and forth. Right now - only one direction works. The other direction, Flash-to-Illustrator, is absolutely terrible for complex paths...

good luck...

In flash CS4 Professional, you can simply go to File > Export > Export Image... and choose the "Adobe Illustrator" format !
It will be perfectly converted to vectors, text fields, etc...Now that's easy.
Flash is great to do a quick sketch but illustrator is "professional".

Hope this helps someone.

Not so. Even in CS4 you must break apart your artwork before exporting an image to Illustrator format from Flash. And even then, colors will be slightly off.

you say the colors were off from flash to AI. is the flash file in CMYK mode before it was exported to AI?

in flash, export to image< choose .fxg format. then open it in illustrator. voila!!