Is there a way to change the quality settings or bunches of bitmaps at once? They all appear to be locked, by default, to the imported quality settings (best). Setting the publish JPG quality down doesn't seem to affect them.
I'm probably missing something dreadfully obvious.
should be in the overall publish setting near the bottom?
Sounds stoopid, I know, but it flat wasn't working the other day. Weird. Seems fine now...
''''' really?
Srsly. For some reason, it was only affecting about one bitmap in 10. The others had their quality 'locked' somehow. I dunno. Drove me nuts but now, the same settings on the same FLA work fine. :shrug:
you can right click in the lib on the jpg and adjust image properties per image, maybe that was it??
Nope. They were all set to 'default document quality' or whatever that is.
mysterious mysteries
Ah-ha!!!
I caught it. Sometimes, I get THIS in my bitmap properties:
Notice that there's no option for setting it to the default publication settings. I can manually set each bitmap, or I can "Use imported JPEG data."
WTF does this mean? Where's it coming from? How can I easily change settings on 160 bitmap images?
Well my answer is simple I personally think that photoshop's image ready is where you should be optimising Jpg's or in fireworks. I am not sure which is best if you have them both compare the results. Anyway, in photoshop I am sure you know you can setup a batch process.
As long as they are in the same (relative?) location as before; Then when you select all your images in the flash library (on a mac you can select them with the apple key and then ctrl for right click) they should be updateable in one go (I checked it comes up with a check boxes to allow you to deselect some). From a test, flash imports all jpg's to use thier default settings ie no individual compression, if you want to get into setting optimisation in flash which I don't think is such a good idea then this link should shed some light (we are talking flash 8 right?).
http://www.tink.ws/blog/jpeg-quality-does-not-affect-jpegs/
( size and optimise pixels graphics is not what flash is for 
!)
ofcourse I await corrections to my assumptions from thoughs above - but since people have argued about fireworks verses photoshop jpeg compression I feel flash is unlikely to be better when it has less options to play with than image ready.
You're prolly right, Justin. The best place to do the actual tweaking is outside in PS or someplace where I've got more control.
It's just that I was looking to test the effect of changing the settings on a file that's gotten a bit large, and that seemed the easiest way to do it.
Then, there was that frikkin' weird dialog box again and I thought I'd post about it in the hopes that somebody would know why half the time I see one thing and half the time I see something else.
BTW, these were not cut-and-paste. They were pulled in as an image sequence from the hard drive (001.jpg, 002.jpg, etc.) At first I thought it was prolly picking up metadata from Adobe Bridge or something, but that's not the case.
:shrug:
does flash look to see if the file is there to update and change menu - no idea?
I'm not sure what you mean.
I never import as JPEG, I always import as PNG. That way you can do a global Jpeg compression in the publish settings..and ALSO...you have a lossless PNG that will never treat you badly and will never break your heart.
As for 160 image..WTF?!?
WTF??!!
Is it an animation sequence?
the link I posted suggests to me; that flash shows the update bitmap dialog when you can update it presupposing that this is the ideal, when not possible it lets you globally set it?
PNG are normally heavier per the same quality as are gif's, so sometimes it is better to use jpgs where possible. If you want a non square image you can import a just black and white ver jpeg which you can create in photoshop by adjusting the graph of colors and in flash trace to bitmap to create your mask for your image, then you can adjust the edges with the expanding/insetting fill. Sorry not to mention exact names of tools/processes I can if interested and not following. If your really fancy you can prob use some code to do multi level alphas on a jpeg using a grayscale to define alphas, sort of idea persist suggested and I used for reflections.
Are there other advantages in PNG's WingWorm that I am missing?
JLM, you can import lossless PNG but export it to any compression you want. That way you have both a lossless image to play around with in flash until you're happy with the export settings and the other benefit is you can use it's alpha and retain it on export.
PNG FTW.
Importing Jpegs is a fuck up waiting to happen. Take everything in in PNG and then fanny around with your export settings in flash.
surely flash is not the best package to optimise png's? And why are jpg a f'up waiting to happen?? Mc did you get something working, often in flash doing it the hard way is quicker than working out a quicker way.
Originally posted by: JLM surely flash is not the best package to optimise png's?
Why not? You're taking in a lossless PNG image, then defining your jpeg compression on export within Flash. It couldn't be more efficient.
Originally posted by: JLM And why are jpg a f'up waiting to happen??
Well to name one thing..your Jpeg masking idea that you listed above sounds like a really really long workaround that will result in a pretty poor transparency when you could just export to Jpeg quality from an alpha layered PNG that you've already got on a perfect transparency from PShop?
Plus if you're saving files out as compressed Jpegs (from Pshop or wherever), it's easy to treat that as the master for future use. Not a good idea. Create a PNG-24 and it's perfect quality that you can always compress on publish.
In all the sites we've ever made I don't think we've ever imported Jpeg. Everything's taken in as PNG.
Originally posted by: JLM PNG are normally heavier
Not true, again...if you set your compression quality for the exported Jpeg in Flash it wont be any bigger at all.
Originally posted by: wingworm I never import as JPEG, I always import as PNG. That way you can do a global Jpeg compression in the publish settings..and ALSO...you have a lossless PNG that will never treat you badly and will never break your heart.
As for 160 image..WTF?!?
WTF??!!
Is it an animation sequence?
Yeah - it's an animation sequence. The JPG/PNG issue is probably a real consideration, but I'm not sure it would/will help me here, as I can't set the global compression settings upon publication. Or rather, I can set them, but all my imported image files ignore them. (See screen shot above. Use publication settings does not appear!) > Originally posted by: wingworm Not true, again...if you set your compression quality for the exported Jpeg in Flash it wont be any bigger at all.
Again, it's not working for me. All my images ignore the publication settings. :shrug:
Sometimes I get the properties on the left; sometimes I get the properties on the right. Sometimes I get the one on the right. Sometimes they use the document settings, sometimes they use the 'imported' settings. I don't know why I get one and not the other. I used 'Import to Stage' in both cases. When it says 'Use imported JPEG data' it ignores the document publish quality settings. :shrug:++
hmmmm..is it due to the import size? I see one of your images is over 2meg, that's pretty huge..maybe its causing Flash to default to use imported data?
So are you creating an animation with a series of 160 2meg images?
Holy fucking turdshit!!!
Actually, the size of that file on my hard drive is about 70K. :shrug:
I don't think a frakking BMP would be 2MB at that size, would it? Wait, I guess it would at 32bpp. I dunno. I'm flummoxed.
edit: I'd think maybe it has to do with the fact that I pulled it in as part of an image sequence, but I've seen it before on single images saved from PS or downloaded from iStock, etc.
hmmm....I've never taken and animation sequence in via Jpeg, and it looks like a flash FUBAR I'd gladly sidestep forever. Can you not export your sequence as PNG? That should resolve your dodgy flash Jpeg compression interface bug.
Do you really think it's the JPEG side of things that's farking me up? As I said, I've seen this on non-sequenced images, such as stock photos from iStock, etc.
You can import sequences of PNG's, JPEG's and GIF's, if they are named with numbers at the end of the name I think flash picks up on it, ie img0.png, img1.png, img2.png.... (correct me if I am wrong).
I am not convinced that PNG's are as small as JPG's another trick I have had to use is to capture the background of the movie as the cut mask trick can be rather bitty round the edge in some instances.
But Jpeg's being much smaller - I would go so far as saying I have tested it - but it was a long time ago and I can't remember details to be sure of these results, but I do specifically remember some tests on the ancient greek stuff for british museum several years ago.
Really I should do some proper test since everything else is here say from me or wingworm, but I should use the latest version of CS3 as that is most relevant to now and future, but I don't have CS3 installed anywhere, and while I might fork out for flash CS3 I can't justify photoshop CS3.
Maclarkson maybe you could upload the source images somewhere and a rough fla without images and someone might be able to work out why flash is behaving this way?
Just tested this....
PNG taken into Flash and exported 70%: 84k
Jpeg 70% compression exported from PShop: 84k
Plus, I wont have to fanny around with making a mask in Flash that'll look nowhere near as clean! :ooh:
Ok point taken although it would be nice to see if there were any differences visually between them at different resolutions not just numbers but by comparing the visual output for different optimisations as I am really surprised that you can't get a better image externally. But from now on unless I need to really to squeeze bytes and have time to experiment I will use png as per your advice. Cheers for checking.