Fireworks/Flash Integration Not Useful

Question

I’ve begun experimenting with Fireworks and the vaunted
integration between FW & Flash seems to be mostly hype.
(I’m speaking of the big deal Adobe makes about it in the CS3
Video Workshop.) So far I’m finding that the limitations of
what can be transported through round-trips between the two apps
render the purported integration largely useless.
Some of the most useful effects, like those commonly applied
in the provided Styles, don’t survive the import into Flash.
E.g., for Plastic Button 009 the Hue/Saturation filter
doesn’t make it into Flash. Without the HS filter, you
don’t get any color in Flash.
And even when the needed visual properties do make it intact,
the update mechanism doesn’t seem to work. For example, I
created a new FW file, drew a rounded rectangle and applied the
Chrome Reflective 006 Style and saved the file. I imported it into
the Flash library choosing the maintain appearance options. I then
went back into FW and applied the Chrome Misc 003 style and saved.
Then, in Flash I right-clicked on the bitmap in the library and
chose Update but when I clicked the Update button it just said 0 of
1 items updated and displayed a little question mark. I’ve
had similar problems importing PSD files/layers into Flash and
trying to update.
I tried another test, this time choosing the “keep all
paths editable” option when importing into Flash. However,
this lost some of the desired effects and didn’t even provide
the option to update (grayed out).
So, as far as I can tell, I have to create each image as a
separate file in FW and then just import it as a regular GIF or
JPEG into Flash. FW can still be useful as it provides some nice
styles, gradients, textures and other features that can help in
creating web graphics. But integration with Flash seems to be all
but non-existent. Am I missing something??
David Salahi

Answer 1

I love Fireworks + Flash integration, it's what originally
got me using Fireworks, actually. But there are some bumps that you
need to be familiar with, as you've found. It also takes some
understanding of the Flash platform and how it differs from the
freedoms you get in Fireworks, so hopefully I can help there:
Filters - Yep, Flash only supports a small subset of filters.
This might change in the future with the announcement of
Hydra/Pixel
Bender, which is really exciting, but for now you are stuck
with only a few filters in Flash. Open up Flash and get familiar
with them. And be glad we aren't having this conversation a few
version ago, when there were no filters at all! Once you are
familiar with the filters and blendmodes that Flash has, when you
are working in Fireworks and intend to go to Flash, remember what
filters you can use. The rest will have to be avoided or flattened
before importing into Flash. Yes, it's technology limiting your
creative freedom, I hate that, but if you understand the limits you
can still push it very far. BTW, Hue/Saturation actually does make
it from FW to FL for me.
The Update option is really intended for Bitmaps linked to an
external bitmap image file, like JPGs or GIFs. When you went to
update your bitmap you probably noticed that the Path field was
blank -- this is because Flash doesn't have it linked to an image
file, and it can't pull it out of a PNG source file. That would be
a really nice feature, and one I've requested:
http://adobe.com/go/wish/
When you choose "keep all paths editable" then all filters
and effects you used which are not supported in Flash are stripped
out. There are other features which Fireworks has that Flash does
not, like pattern/texture fills, some of the gradients, etc. They
all don't exist in Flash so they don't come through. Again this all
comes back to understanding what Flash can do, and making sure your
Fireworks design is compatible.
Sounds like you had a jarring experience trying to integrate
between FW and Flash, but the problem is understanding the huge
difference between what you get on Flash's canvas and Firework's
canvas. Flash is generally limited. The reason Flash is limited is
because it's a runtime canvas optimized for web. When you make
something in Fireworks you have unlimited freedom because in the
end you'll just export to a static pixel image. But in Flash, you
are dealing with a whole different beast -- interaction. The Flash
canvas is rendered at runtime... you can think of the Flash Player
as fulfilling the role of Fireworks running in the browser, so of
course it has to be in a much smaller scale.
Anyway, once you get used to how Flash works and how that
differs from Fireworks, integration will make a lot more sense. The
way you describe of exporting each graphic/layer as a separate JPG
and importing is basically the way it used to have to be done with
Photoshop, but I definitely recommend trying to get familiar with
how Flash works and getting a hang of the design to import process
of Fireworks to Flash.
In case it helps, here's my workflow of Fireworks to Flash (I
create a lot of Flash content so this is very battle tested for
me):
1) Design in Fireworks, with both knowledge of what Flash can
do, and a bit of reckless abandon because I'm a designer, I'll make
it look the way I want even if it takes extra work in Flash ;)
2) Once the design is final, I create a duplicate Fireworks
page
3) I go through my design and make it as Flash compatible as
possible. This means flattening anything that needs to be
flattened, sometimes converting text to paths, redoing some
graphics in vector, etc
4) Import into Flash
5) Cleanup anything that didn't come through right. At this
point it's just small stuff, like dotted strokes come through
solid, so I have to make them dotted again
6) Animate or rig up with ActionScript
7) For small changes, I make my change in Fireworks, then I
copy/paste only the changed elements back into Flash and replace
them
Hope that helps. Good luck!