Chapter 5. Using Images and Video
Flash can be thought of as a multimedia construction kit. This chapter shows how images and videos can be imported from external sources and combined into an elegant Flash piece. Along the way, we’ll learn a lot about optimization while improving our design skills.
Flash’s drawing tools are primarily vector-based, and so aren’t ideal for editing bitmaps. We’ll cover a few bitmap-related tricks in Chapters 6 and 7, but meaningful bitmap editing requires a program designed for that purpose, such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks. In this chapter, we’ll look at how integrating Flash with other applications helps us meet our design needs for a project.
While Photoshop and Illustrator are the standard tools for graphics editing and creation, Macromedia has done a lot to ensure that Fireworks and Flash work well together. As a result, Fireworks is a viable alternative for web-based graphics development. If you purchased Studio MX 2004, Fireworks is likely already installed on your machine and dying to be put to use. If not, go install the trial version now from the CD-ROM included with this book …I’ll wait.
In addition to bitmaps, video is a wonderful way to offer high-quality content to users through Flash, and Flash is actually quite powerful when it comes to compressing and deploying video online. We’ll explore video in Flash as we create an online ad for a pet adoption event. Throughout this chapter, and indeed the entire book, we use the term ...
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