Bitmap Graphics

[KarenInPA]

Hi Everyone:

I am developing a site that is by necessity very heavy on bitmap graphics.

What I want to be able to do is harness Photoshop's ability to compress quality JPEGs and keep the filesize/quality the same on export from Flash.

So if I have a JPEG that compressed to 35k, and I'm happy with the quality, I don't want Flash recompressing the image. But it seems that at the 100% setting or lossless setting, the filesizes jump enormously. But wouldn't choosing anything less than that recompress the JPEG?

I'm confused. Any help in this area by way of explanation would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Karen

[gromit]

Hi,

i know this is probably not what you want to hear...but I have found that getting Flash to cope well with Bitmaps is really a matter of trial and error.

I recently found that when I compressed a jpeg in photoshop down to 12k and then threw it into Flash and trace bitmapped it, its size had suddenly exploded to 140k. Annoying as this was, I did eventually find a solution.

The solution I used was to compress the image in photoshop to 12k, throw it into Flash, and then convert it to a symbol (f8) straight away without tracing it. This seemed to work absolutely fine and I had no problems with file size. Unfortunately though, I have no idea why!

I too am quite a new user, so I have no doubt in my mind that there are some gurus out there that will quosh this method and give you a better idea of what is going on....but until then...try it! How can it hurt?

Hope that helps somehow

Stu. aka Gromit ;)

[Narrowfeather]

Just by way of explanation as to the increase in file size after you trace bitmap on a .jpg image, I belive this is what happens: Trace bitmap actually outlines the elements of the raster (bitmap) image, converting it to a vector image. (Like an Adobe Illustrator image) If the image is rather complex this can result in a great many paths (and a large file size) in the embedded vector file and thusly in the flash file. The resulting vector file may be smaller than the UNCOMPRESSED raster file but can be considerably larger than the compressed .jpg file. This is why it seems to get larger when traced. Converting it to a symbol instead of tracing will retain the highly efficient .jpg compression. Simpler images may give you opposite results due to extremely small vector file size. Digit? -Narrowfeather