Flash is Weird
While working on my massive website overhaul, I hit a major snag: Flash and Photoshop don’t get along well. At all. I try to directly import a PSD, I get a BMP. I try to import a PSD into Fireworks (Macromedia’s attempt at graphics software), it gets mangled. I try exporting the Photoshop layers individually to a PDF, then importing that into Flash, I get something so garbled it’s basically unusable. I want to import my PSD files into Flash and have the layers perfectly translated into Flash layers, since Flash and Fireworks both suck at graphics compared to Photoshop, in my experience. However, since that’s apparently not possible, I spent the last several days breaking my site layout down into component images which represent each state of the site (link hover, link selected, etc). I have about 50 component images so far, and I’ll be needing more later on. I finally finished the bulk of this phase, got all the images imported to Flash, and got the pieces lined back up. Now, I need to animate the thing, with the help of Flash MX For Dummies. Aside from this being a learning experience, I’m hoping to turn this into a marketable skill, I just need a damn good printer to put together a not-digital portfolio.
In addition to downloading a bunch of games, I downloaded several thousand Photoshop brushes and plugins, so once I’m done with all this I can try my paw at real digital artwork, rather than just simple shapes with gradients and an occasional lens flare. That sort of things works if you’re like me and have simplistic tastes in website designs, but I’m hesitant to call my work “art”.
Aside from that, little else happened today. I watched Pirates of the Carribean again, that movie ROCKS. And Orlando Bloom is yummy. Murrrrrr…
Saw this in someone else’s LJ.
My username’s colour is felix_j
Hmm, interesting…
May 24th, 2004 at 9:10:21
*waves*
Have you tried saving the images as a low compression (0%) JPEG and then importing them into flash? I know the PSD’s are a pain in the tail… but would think that JPEGs (or even TIFs) should come across much better. But to be honest, I’m not sure you can come over from PSD with layers… *shrug*… I use paintshop pro, but even there, I don’t think the layers would just “pop” over.
As for the pirates of the carribean… very cool movie. Although I’d rahter be with Keira Knightley, myself.
May 24th, 2004 at 10:22:24
Well, the problem here is that Adobe is a bunch of assholes who refuse to completely open the PSD protocol so people can write interoperable software with it. A while back, they published some documentation on how alot of things in it worked, and people wrote their software off of that model, but now they’ve gone and completely changed things without providing details on their changes.
I tried updating the PSD support for Gimp 2.0, and eventually said fuck it and moved on with my life. Fuck Adobe in their fucking faces for these fucking stunts they pull.
May 24th, 2004 at 15:44:31
Of course you are gonna have problems, you’re importing raster graphics into a vector graphic application
May 24th, 2004 at 19:29:44
Should I be as amused as I am when you refer to something as ‘paw’ or ‘knawing’ on something? I get a kick out of it.
And Pirates of the Carribbean IS a very good movie. I really liked it. And of course, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom are hot.
-Jamie
May 24th, 2004 at 22:43:16
Heh, I’m glad I amuse you, I find it fun myself. Oh, and you misspelled “gnawing”
Woohoo, we agree on something; the hotness of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom