photoshop image to flash problem

The only bad thing about importing things with transparency into Flash, is that in 16bit color, there is a ghosting or "halo" type effect with the transparent area of the graphics. This drove me nuts for quite a while until I found a fix for it.

You guessed it, you have to break apart the image and carefully erase or mask out the unneeded areas. This is true even if it's a PNG. You can read more about it here....

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/transparent_bitmaps.htm

The reason I wanted to make sure things looked good in 16bit is because, believe it or not, the majority of users of my sites have had that color setting. As always, I try to design for the lowest common denominator (except 640 X 480, I won't bend on that one! heh heh).

I just thought I would mention that here so nobody has to endure the "period of enlightenment" that I had to endure using transparency and Flash!

DrumDesigner - can u explain more about 16bit display? Just trying to understand the problem better and I don't know the technical side of monitors and what bit depth they usually run at.

When people use "16 bit", the color isn't as nice as say 32 bit. This means that the quality of the color is more substandard to a designer if he/she have chosen to design their sites using 32 bit color. They, (like myself, years ago) get a rude awakening when they view things in 16bit. Nothing holds more true than using transparency in Flash and having a really kickin' movie only to view it in 16bit and see "ghosted borders" around your objects where transparency should be.

As far as the details concerning the differences between the quality of 32 vs. 16, you can find out at any computer guru site. But I do know that running 16 bit requires less memory from a given computer which makes it a great color setting choice for those who wants to save on resources there. But it also means that there are less colors displayed. This page at the URL below explains it in a more technical fashion.

http://hankfiles.pcvsconsole.com/answer.php?file=459

As I said before, the majority of users of virtually ALL of my sites have the 16bit color setting as their choice. This means that as a designer, I wouldn't be very good if I left out that factor when designing sites in either Flash or HTML. When I design, I either do so in 16bit color, or I'll keep checking that configuration if I'm designing in 32bit. Again, the idea is to try to fit the lowest common denominator. Although, there are some tradeoffs. I don't design for 640 X 480 (I used a minimum of 800 X 600). But as far as the "viewability" of the site goes where color goes, I'm very careful and wary of the 16bit setting and how it displays things differently than 32bit.

Where do you change those color settings? In good ole' Windows properties. Right click in an empty area of the desktop and select properties, and then click the following tab and then "color quality" in the screenshot I've included at the URL below:

http://home.twcny.rr.com/mysticalride/colorsetting/colorsetting.gif

So, based on the fact that 16 bit doesn't handle transparency in Flash very well, when I'm in Photoshop and I'm making a graphic with transparency that will be imported into Flash, I make the "transparent" area a very contrasting color from the image I want the transparency to surround. So if I have a silver colored object, I'll make the "transparent" area a bright red. Then, I export the file in any given format. Then, in Flash, I'll "magic wand" the bright red color out and get a very quick and easy transparent image that looks just fine in 16bit. This is a technique that seems to work with me. It takes a little more time, but it's well worth it.

Good luck and be very careful of 16bit when you're using transparency in Flash! Otherwise, your Flash site may look like crap for some users! Hope the info helped. Let me know if it doesn't....