I need to make text for a flash website. I would like to do this from PS. I am totally confused on this issue. Can I make text that is vector based from PS (I assume that’s what it needs to be – vector based). How do I do it? I know nothing about web graphics and am just getting familiar with CS. I have looked at the online manual, but…well it’s a bit confusing.
Nancy: You are embarking on a very advanced project if you are new to web graphics. I take it you know Flash? If you don’t you are going to have a rough road ahead, unless you are either 1) a genius, 2) taking a class, 3) have someone helping you, 4) have no immediate deadline by which this needs to be done, combined with 5) endless amounts of patience. 🙂
As for your question about exporting vector graphics, I know you can save live text and vector to PDF and EPS and still preserve the vector but I don’t know of a way to save it for Flash as vector out of Photoshop or ImageReady.
I just tried saving a quick mockup as a PNG file but when I imported it into Flash it showed up as a bitmap image.
If it’s just text (which will be shown in whatever font that the User has chosen in their Browser) just insert it as straight HTML Text or in a text box via GoLive.
If you want a particular font to be used, you can create the page in Illustrator and save the whole page as a JPEG for insertion into a GoLive picture box.
Yes, I should amend that. I was assuming you wanted to animate the text in Flash. If it’s static, just use html. Heck, plain text can be done in Netscape Composer.
Thanks to all of you for your help! I guess I could do something in Illustrator (or Flash itself). What I have is a PSD file (a photo image actually) with some text over it with bevels and all. I just wanted to put that on a website (a flash site). The photo looks fine, but the text is pixelated.
Text that has bevels should actually be treated as artwork and not type. I take it that you want the text to knock out sharply at the edges and ‘float’ over the top of the photo. Wouldn’t you do that as a gif Linda?
A tranparent gif is tricky over a background that is a photo. I like to create my own custom matte around transparent gifs to match the background from all sides best as I can. It sounds like Nancy might just need a decent JPG to preserve the photo image and the bevelled text gradations all in one.
At this point I don’t think we can adequately surmise what’s best without seeing the artwork.
Nancy, I would say send me the file but I’m getting ready to go out tonight… and I’ll be going out again tomorrow… but if you want to send the file I’ll look at it when I have some time.
Okay, You can export your live text or text that has been converted to a shape out of ImageReady to a SWF file, which can then be imported into a Flash movie. Your special effects will not work right though. I tried creating a layer for the special effects but they came into Flash connected to the background.
So you probably need to save image as a jpg, gif, png, or even SWF file and then import it into Flash… unless you want to abandon the special effects.
OK. Lets just forget the photo background for a moment. What if I just wanted to bring the beveled text from PS into the flash sight (with transparent background), could I do that?
