Hi
I am starting my first major flash site for a client - it has to contain over
60 jpegs and I am going to put these in seperate swf files and load them in,
My question is shall I optimize the images before I bring them into flash
using fireworks or should I use flash's optimize on export feature and set a
quality for them all in there.
Any help appreciated

cheers
stacy

I would use flash to set the quality. In my experience, flash seems to
basically ignore the quality setting you originally use anyway...
also, you can load jpgs dynamically without puttint them in their own swf
files.

Definitely use fireworks or photoshop to export and compress your images...I
highly recomend the export preview functions in both programs as they give you
a good 2 or 4-up page spread where you can see exactly how far you can compress
before losing visual information in the image. This allows you to know exactly
what your images will look like in the final project, using flash's included
publishing settings only allow you to put in a number...so your final images
could look like anything and youll have to re-export to get them right...I
prefer making my graphics exactly as I want them and then bringing them into
flash and leaving the jpeg setting at 100%...hope this helps.

Right but flash will apply its own compression either way unless you set it at
100%, so you are better off starting off with higher quality bitmaps. All the
bitmaps in flash end up as jpeg anyway so I dont really see a new to optimize
as gifs like you said.

use png for all your bitmap grafics. scale all your grafics so the match
100% in your movie.
avoid scaling images in flash, it will only bring the quality down (if you
do scale them, scale them for ex 50%, never scale them 49.8 or 50.2%)
you can set the compression level of every image in flash seperatly. for
images that are very important (like company-logo) don"t use compression
on the image at all (set them to lossles)

and once again, use PNG (skipp jpgs or even gifs they are both already
compressed, compressing them twice only takes the quality down)

stacy;
Some prefer to import high quality lossless images (such as png) and use
flash to jpeg compress (you can set the compression either globally on swf
export, or for each image individually in the library), others prefer to do
the jpeg compression in an image editor such as FW. Both methods can work
well in f5+. When you import a jpeg flash the library properties for that
image should default to "use imported jpeg data", _do not_ alter this to
100% (or any other jpeg compression) as this can cause quality loss through
double compression.
You may want to consider loading the jpegs themselves rather than
converting to swf (possible in flash6+ player). -Tom Unger

For me, I wanted the most true to the original image I could get, and I tried
gif, jpeg, and png formats, and Flash, Fireworks and PS editors. I decided on
jpegs and Fireworks. I didn't like the way the png's came out, as they were
far from the original quality of the imaes and scans. gifs weren't much
better. I guess it depends on how true to the original you want.
As for the editors, like someone said, Flash doesn't give you the perciseness
that you can get with the other 2. I did use PS to get them to the kilobit
size I wanted, but used Fireworks to sharpen them. It seems just a bit better
at this thatn PS. Granted I'm picky and have a very specific desire as to how
I want the images presented, so my example might not be right for you. Only
you can decide that.

As for using an array, since the images on my site are not mine, and I wish to
make it as hard as possible for someone to use them without authorization, I
choose Flash. Granted you can take a screen shot of an image in Flash, but its
not as good of quality as it is if someone finds the address where the images
are stored for the array, and "harvests" the, from there. But again, thats
just me.

Good luck.

Alexis