Illustration full of "Clipping Paths"

[zarlekin webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Hi everybody,
I must reduce the complexity of an Illustration as it has to be importet into Flash. This illustration is full of "clipping paths".
Does anybody know, how to get rid of all the unecessary stuff hidden in the clipping paths?
Some easy trick to "flatten" or "crop" somehow the hole Illustration?

Because the only way I know is to take every single objekt,"cut contents" and use the "intersect command".... It's a lot of work.

Would be glad to hear from you :-)

Thanks!

[Tom Unger]

zarlekin;
Afaik export as swf employs flash masks for clipped imagery? If you want
a flattened image file, perhaps exporting as 32 bit png from freehand (or
importing an eps into photoshop or the native freehand file into fireworks
for the image export). -Tom Unger

[zarlekin webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Thanks Tom,
the thing is, I need to keep the vectors...
I found a Studio Article from Macromedia that explains better my problem:

Importing clipping paths
"... Don't forget that when you work with clipping paths, Macromedia Flash imports all of the information outside the clipping path too! If your file size is extraordinarily large and you've been bringing in clipping paths from FreeHand, then that's probably the culprit. Wherever possible, trim out all areas that won't be seen in the clipping area before importing the FreeHand file into Flash...."

zarlekin

[Tom Unger]

zarlekin;
Yes--if Freehand's swf export employs flash masking to preserve the
"clipping", then the entire image would be exported to the swf. If you want
to preserve vector graphics, yet also employ bitmapped imagery, I guess the
most efficient way to bring it into flash would be to bring raster and
vector into flash separately and assemble the illustration there. That way
you can use alpha channels and cropped imagery rather than clipping paths.
-Tom
Unger