Re: FLASH: What program exports in vector graphic?

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 06:26 PM 11/19/99 , you wrote:

>I need to know what program will open a jpg file and export it as a vector

>graphic to be imported into flash.  What is the file extension used so I'll

>know what is already converted?  Is it png?

>

>Thanks,

>

>Colleen Appleton


Hi Colleen,


This is not as simple a conversion as, say converting pict to jpeg. Jpegs 

are raster images and as such they store the picture information as a 

description of every pixel -- what color it will be and where it should be 

placed on the screen. Vector graphics are stored as mathematical 

descriptions of vertices, curves, and fills. That's why they scale up and 

down without losing any detail.  Raster graphics (bitmaps) look lousy when 

they scale up, and usually (but not always) are larger in file size than 

comparable vector graphics.


Converting from raster to vector requires a program that can interpret the 

image information (patterns of color) and figure out where the lines and 

fills  should be. Flash has an autotrace feature that can do this, but it 

is cumbersome to use. Adobe Streamline is the tool of choice for automating 

the task, but it also is not simple to learn; there are many parameters to 

set. Freehand also can import raster images and trace them into vector 

format.  These automatic conversion programs tend to work well with simple 

images but with complex images they will produce a very complex file that 

may be larger than the original raster graphic.


Something to consider seriously is to hand-trace bitmaps within Flash, then 

discard the bitmap and keep just the vector you've created. This is how 

many do it, and it does not take enormous drawing skill to do.





Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)




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