Transparent backgrounds to bitmaps

[EdFredenburgh]

I'm making an animation film in Flash; there's an overall bitmap background, on which I want to place various small bitmaps. In Photoshop I pen-draw round the object, turn the path into a clipping path, make it a selection and then invert the selection, then (belt and braces) I erase everything outside the object; and save as a PNG. Then I import it on to the Flash stage and, almost always (but not always) it comes in a white box. Sometimes it comes with a nearly transparent background, showing traces of faint white – ie background not fully erased.
First, I thought clipping paths were supposed to eliminate everything outside them; second, erasing is not erasing. What's going wrong?

 

[apepp]

...which version of flash?

andrew

 

[EdFredenburgh]

Sorry – Flash MX Professional 2004, v7.2. Mac OSX 10.4.7, on a G4 PowerBook.

 

[apepp]

...have you tried importing a PSD rather than a PNG?

Andrew