[Flash] What image format should I be using? [Resolved]

[mendhak]

What I've been noticing is, I'll create my button images, and import them to flash, only to see that when I play the actual thing, it will lose information at larger resolutions. My buttons are in GIF and JPG.

Is there something I should be doing so as to avoid this loss of image quality?

[CornedBee]

It's in the very nature of raster images not to scale well. You could design the buttons entirely as Flash vector components, then they'd scale. You could use larger images as source, then the loss of quality won't be as noticeable.
GIF (or rather PNG) or JPG has little to do with it, although for most buttons, PNG is the better choice because of the nature of the image.

[mendhak]

Originally posted by CornedBee
It's in the very nature of raster images not to scale well. You could design the buttons entirely as Flash vector components, then they'd scale. You could use larger images as source, then the loss of quality won't be as noticeable.
GIF (or rather PNG) or JPG has little to do with it, although for most buttons, PNG is the better choice because of the nature of the image.

OK, I'll try it out with PNG. I don't suppose PNGs support transparency, do they?

Oh, and where can I be making Flash vector components? In Fireworks? Or in Flash itself?

[mendhak]

Adobe Photoshop gives me an option between PNG 8 and PNG 24. What's the difference?

[CornedBee]

PNGs support full alpha transparency or palette-based transparency. IE doesn't support that kind of PNG, though, which should not be a concern when you're using Flash.

PNG8 is palettized, like GIF. That's probably what you want. PNG24 is true-colour.

Flash vector components? I invented that term. But Flash is a vector-based program, so it should be possible to draw some lines and stuff and combine them into one object.

[Kasracer]

PNG8 works like a gif. You can have workable transparency within IE using PNG8. PNG24 is the nicer format, though.

I'd recommend using PNGs for flash.

Also, Flash has a default option to publish your movie with the JPEG quality at 80% or so. You might want to change that.

[mendhak]

PNGs do well!

Thanks.

[FPG]

I also recomend using PNG's with Flash. Fireworks and Flash work very well together! Wonder why