How to Publish a PNG From Flash

Publishing in the PNG format from Flash allows you to produce high-quality raster images of your Flash artwork, with some transparency preserved. While the PNG format will only capture a single frame, it's still the best option to produce the clearest, highest resolution images. By default Flash exports the first frame as a PNG, unless you specify a different frame using the frame label Static.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A working installation of Flash

1. Open the Publish Settings window by clicking File->Publish Settings or pressing PC keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+F12.

2. On the Formats tab, check "PNG Image (.png)".

3. Click the PNG tab that appears.

4. If you want your published image to be the same size as the Flash movie, leave "Match Movie" checked. If you want to change the size, uncheck "Match Movie" and enter your own pixel values. Keep in mind that if your sizes aren't proportionate to the original size, you may distort the image.

5. Set the bit depth: 8-bit, 24-bit, or 24-bit with Alpha. This determines image quality/number of colors, and the last option allows for image transparency rather than using a white matte by default.

6. Select your options: Optimize Colors, Dither Solids, Interlace, Remove Gradients and Smooth. Optimize Colors compares the colors in the image to the colors in the stored palette, and removes any unused colors from the stored palette to save a few bytes in image size.
   
   Dither solids is used when you have an 8-bit (256 color) palette; this mixes pixels of colors in the existing palette to emulate colors that aren't part of the stored palette.
   
   Interlace will allow a browser to draw a PNG bit-by-bit as the data is downloaded, rather than waiting for it to download fully before displaying all at once.
   
   Remove Gradients will change gradients to solid colors, filled instead by the first color in the gradient.
   
   Smooth applies an anti-aliasing filter to soften and smooth colors in an exported image, but may also make for fuzzier edges.

7. The Dither dropdown will only be active if you've selected 8-bit depth and Dither Solids; choose the dither method to determine how colors are selected.

8. Choose the palette type to determine what colors are used when displaying your image. Web 216 uses the default 216 standard "safe" colors that will always work for web browsers. Adaptive builds a color palette based on the colors used in the image, trying to match them as closely as possible and discarding colors that aren't used. Web Snap Adaptive also builds a custom color palette based on colors used in the image, but will change them to the closest match in the Web 216 palette. Custom lets you create a custom color palette. You can load a palette file using the browse button available below the options, allowing you to load the palette from a saved location on your hard drive.

9. If you used Adaptive or Web Snap adaptive, set the maximum number of colors that your palette can generate.

10. Set the filter options to determine how the PNG is compressed. Each filter works differently on each image, so you may have to experiment to get the best quality.

11. Publish your image by either clicking "Publish" from the publish settings window, or clicking "OK" to save the settings and then navigating to File->Publish (PC shortcut Shift+F12).