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z35

Programmer
Dec 21, 2001
206
US
hi,

I have a compex line drawing of a house. i want to import the drawing into flash without the background.
I want the lines to import into flash but not the background...just the lines. is there a way to do this and have it look very clean and polished?



 
Hi,

That (could) be your worst nightmare. Removing a background completely from an image is not an easy task, and if your pictrue has a lot of lines with little spaces inbetween then that could be very hard.

There is no real right way to do this, or any specific method to use. When I remove backgrounds from an image I use a combination of: magic wand, marquees, lasso, eraser, quick masks, color range, and sometimes alpha channels.

If the image is nice and big and the spaces inbetween lines aren't that small and don't have complex array of color then it will make doing this alot easier, but give yourself alot of time to accomlish this.

One suggestion that might work (not entirely sure of the qulaity, or if this would work) is if you have Adobe Illustrator try copying the image into Illustrator and do the trace function on the black parts. This will not only get the black parts of the line drawing but it will be turned into a scalable vector image.

Hope this helps!
greenjumpy.gif
NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com
 
uh! that sounds messy. i was hoping with photoshop..such an advanced graphics software, there would be a neat and simple feature that will do this for me.

the bg is white and the lines are black...only 2 solid colors. can't i use "select color range" white and then erase it or something like that?

but then even if i get rid of the white, the only way to import it into flash is as a gif. wouldn't a gif make it look jaggedy? what do you think?
 
Hi,

You can use color range to get rid of the white but depending on the fusiness that you have choosen you might end up getting rid of some of the anti-aliasing around the curved black lines and that is what makes them jagged. A .gif file is not what makes things jagged. Sure .gif's only save 256 color palette but if done properly you won't get a jagged edge using a .gif necessarily.

I'm not saying that photoshop can't do this for you, I'm saying it will take a combination of a variety of the tools within PS and time.

BTW - you can import .png's into flash so you don't have to use a .gif. .png's are one step higher than .jpg's they save all the colors that .jpg's do but they also save alpha transparencies (varying degree of transparency in colors)

Hope this helps!
greenjumpy.gif
NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com
 
If it's only black and white then it's easy to isolate it from the background. Actually, there are a few ways, but here's one.

1. Double-click the image in the 'Layers' palette to turn the image into a layer (this is so you can make part of it transparent).

2. Select All, then Edit > Cut to erase everything and place it on the Clipboard.

3. Press 'Q' to enter quick mask mode, Edit > Paste, press 'Q' again to exit quick mask mode, and choose Select > Inverse.

4. Change the foreground color to black, fill the selection and deselect.

As Spyderix said, PNGs will give you the best quality for importing into Flash. Keep in mind that Photoshop is predominantly a raster based application, while Flash is largely vector based. What program was the house originally created in? If it was a CAD or illustration program, you might be better off avoiding Photoshop altogether and see what export options are available to you.
 
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