insane file size?!?!?!

[theodren_1983]

I've got a farily large file i'm trying to make smaller. It's 1.1 megs at the moment.
Unfortunately I'm having to import alot of graphics from photoshop, and flash crashes when I try to convert them to vectors, so i'm stuck with the usual formats it seems.
To test something i converted 26 of the images that are currently being imported as .psd to gifs. the images were 1/3rd the size after conversion.
I then deleted the 26 psd files from my flash library and replaced them with the 26 gif images.
the compressed .fla file dropped from 23 megs to 20 megs. I went ahead and exported the movie, but now the movie using the gifs is 1.5 megs???? I don't understand why it would do this when it behaved as i had expected it would throughout the rest of the process?? if anyone could shed some light into this for me i would appreciate it greatly

[iHATEsushi]

Here's what I posted in a different post:

You can bring your photo resolution to 72 in Photoshop since that's all monitors will present to its viewers and that can cut in file size. Look at your dimentions of the picture and adjust when necessary. Then when you again optimize in Photoshop you can play with the settings of making your image either bitmap or jpeg and adjusting the lossy (meaning quality) just to the point where is begins to change. By doing this you can really save on file size.

Another thing you can do is to try converting your images to Vector using Illustrator instead. After all this is what it does best. Keep in mind though that not all effects can be converted properly like gradients etc... I'm not sure what kind of images your trying to convert, but heavy graphic material won't always convert which is why it will crash and go Kaplooie! If they are basic photos Illustrator will do them just fine. Another thing you may want to look at is your hard drive/video card. Sometimes if your hard drive or video card isn't up to par and won't be able to convert it easily (but in rare occasions is it this).

[theodren_1983]

I'm having to work with some transparency though, and for some reason I can't get jpeg 2000 to maintain a transparent background (even though i've been told that's one of the advantages of jpeg 2000), which is why I started converting the psd files to gifs. It made the file size smaller (as expected) and made the .fla file smaller when I swapped out the psd files for the gif files. Yet when published the swf file was actually around 400k larger than before? I'm not understanding how that is possible, unless maybe flash can't compress gifs as well for some reason? Haven't found anything on the subject though.... anyone?

[Branny]

try png24, that brings in transparency much better than gif