Working with Illustrator and Flash

Pasting Illustrator artwork

You can create graphically rich artwork in Illustrator and copy and paste it into Flash simply, quickly, and seamlessly.

When you paste Illustrator artwork into Flash, the following attributes are preserved:

• Paths and shapes

• Scalability

• Stroke weights

• Gradient definitions

• Text (including OpenType fonts)

• Linked images

• Symbols

• Blending modes

In addition, Illustrator and Flash support pasted artwork in the following ways:

• When you select entire top-level layers in Illustrator artwork and paste them into Flash, the layers are preserved along with their properties (visibility and locking).

• Non-RGB Illustrator colors (CMYK, grayscale, and custom) convert to RGB in Flash. RGB colors paste as expected.

• When you import or paste Illustrator artwork, you can use various options to preserve effects (such as drop shadow on text) as Flash filters.

• Flash preserves Illustrator masks.

Exporting SWF files from Illustrator

From Illustrator, you can export SWF files that match the quality and compression of SWF files exported from Flash.

When you export, you can choose from a variety of presets to ensure optimal output, and you can specify how to handle multiple artboards, symbols, layers, text, and masks. For example, you can specify whether Illustrator symbols are exported as movie clips or graphics, or you can choose to create SWF symbols from Illustrator layers.

Importing Illustrator files into Flash

When you want to create complete layouts in Illustrator and then import them into Flash in one step, you can save your artwork in the native Illustrator format (AI) and import it, with high fidelity, into Flash using the File > Import To Stage or File > Import To Library commands in Flash.

If your Illustrator file contains multiple artboards, you select the artboard you want to import from the Import dialog box in Flash, and specify settings for each layer in that artboard. All objects on the selected artboard import as a single layer in Flash. If you import another artboard from that same AI file, the objects from that artboard import as a new layer in Flash.

When you import Illustrator artwork as an AI, EPS, or PDF file, Flash preserves the same attributes as for pasted Illustrator artwork. In addition, when an imported Illustrator file contains layers, you can import them in any of the following ways:

• Convert Illustrator layers to Flash layers

• Convert Illustrator layers to Flash frames

• Convert all Illustrator layers to a single Flash layer

Symbol workflow

Symbol workflow in Illustrator is similar to symbol workflow in Flash.

Symbol creation

When you create a symbol in Illustrator, the Symbol Options dialog box lets you name the symbol and set options specific to Flash: movie clip symbol type (which is the default for Flash symbols), Flash registration grid location, and 9-slice scaling guides. In addition, you can use many of the same symbol keyboard shortcuts in Illustrator and Flash (such as F8 to create a symbol).

Isolation mode for symbol editing

In Illustrator, double-click a symbol to open it in isolation mode for easier editing. In isolation mode, only the symbol instance is editable—all other objects on the artboard are dimmed and unavailable. After you exit isolation mode, the symbol in the Symbols panel, and all instances of that symbol are updated accordingly. In Flash, symbol-editing mode and the Library panel work in a similar fashion.

Symbol properties and links

Using the Symbols panel or the Control panel, you can easily assign names to symbol instances, break links between instances and symbols, swap a symbol instance with another symbol, or create a copy of the symbol. In Flash, the editing features in the Library panel work in a similar way.

Static, dynamic, and input text objects

When you bring static text from Illustrator into Flash, Flash converts the text to outlines. In addition, you can set up your text in Illustrator as dynamic text. Dynamic text enables you to edit text content programmatically in Flash, and easily manage projects that require localization in multiple languages.

In Illustrator, you can specify individual text objects as static, dynamic, or input text. Dynamic text objects in Illustrator and Flash have similar properties. For example, both use kerning that affects all characters in a text block rather than individual characters, both anti-alias text the same way, and both can be linked to an external XML file containing text.