Flash/Freehand, import export, symbol instance

[Patrice]

Hi,
i use Flash a lot. Even if i have been drawing in Flash for a long time, i
find now the drawing tools in Flash are "limitated".
Now, i would like to use one vector drawing editor.
I hesitate between Illustrator CS or Freehand MX..

There are things that i would like to know considering Freehand:
Is it possible to go from Flash to Freehand and back, without saving .fh* or
..swf each time? For example like it is done between Photoshop and Imageready
with a button.

When i use Sprayer tool (or canal) in Illustrator (Freehand), how can Flash
recognize that it is the same symbol used many times?
Because for the moment, when i import in Flash a drawing made with Sprayer
or canal, then in flash, i have several drawings but not several instance of
the same symbol..

Thanks for your help!

[James E. Talmage]

> Is it possible to go from Flash to Freehand and back, without saving .fh*
or

> .swf each time? For example like it is done between Photoshop and

Imageready

> with a button.

There is no "jump to" interaction between Flash and FH akin to that of
Photoshop/Imageready. The "integration" is not really that tight. You can
call Flash from FH to edit an SWF imported into FH; but I don't think you
can similarly invoke FH from Flash to edit on-page artwork.

Understand, despite marketing hype FH artwork and Flash artwork is
fundamentally different. The similarity between the drawing tools is just
interface stuff designed to disguise the diffrences. Paths drawn in FH must
be *translated* into Flash paths and vice-versa. In this regard, FH is more
like Adobe Illustrator than it is like Flash, and although some Flash
conveniences have been built into FH, working with either FH or AI to create
original vector art intended for use in Flash is not really all that
different.

You can Copy/Paste simple paths from AI or FH into Flash with similar
results. But FH has advantages in this when the paths are more elaborate,
for instance when they contains grad fills. Grad fills from AI seem to come
in as bitmaps, while Flash seems to be able to translate FH grads into
native ones. (I've done only a little experimentation with this, so there
may be limitations.)

> When i use Sprayer tool (or canal) in Illustrator (Freehand), how can

Flash

> recognize that it is the same symbol used many times?
> Because for the moment, when i import in Flash a drawing made with Sprayer
> or canal, then in flash, i have several drawings but not several instance

of

> the same symbol..

I don't know what "canal" is. But using the Symbol Sprayer in Illustrator
CS, exporting to SWF, and then importing that SWF into a Flash document does
indeed result in instances of the one Symbol and the Symbol appears in the
Library.

Understand, though, there are many things you can do to those Symbols in AI
before exporting the SWF which will cause the individual instances to become
additional Symbols (sometimes MANY additional Symbols). For example, I can
spray some instances of a Symbol and then use the Symbol Screener to make
them of different transparency. This comes into Flash as one Symbol with
many Instances, each instance having a diffrent alpha setting.

But if I also apply the Symbol Stainer to that set of Symbol Instances, I
will have multiple symbols in the Flash document; each one a different
color.

JET