What is the difference between your regular ole Flash site and a professional one? Well, it largely comes down to opinion, but there are also some key elements to look at. I've learned after viewing Flash sites for years that the ones that catch readers' attention more than anything are the ones with great graphics. Yes, graphics and design, NOT programming.

You can have the most advanced action scripting site, but if your artwork doesn't cut it, then neither will your site.

Here is the big question - "How do they make those awesome graphics and great design?"

As far as a good design, that just takes practice and looking around. If you see a site that catches your attention, take notes. This may sound silly, but taking notes can make the difference from a garage designer and a professional designer working for a fortune 500 company.

There are several ways to produce professional graphics for flash.

One way is to draw everything within flash, but there is a drawback. Some designers can do it, but for the most of us it's hard to get those great effects that you can do with other programs such as Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe PhotoShop or Adobe Illustrator.

If you want to do everything within Flash, that's fine, but it takes a long time to get everything looking professional (at least in my case). It also takes a lot of practice!

The easiest way for me is to make the graphics I want OUTSIDE of flash. I usually use Photoshop or Fireworks to do this.

I design all of my graphics with 3rd party software then save them as either a JPG or a GIF and import them into flash. There are 2 ways you can use graphics after you've imported them into Flash. One is to design them exactly how you want outside of Flash, import the file and use it as is. The second way is to convert them to vectors using the option within Flash. This way they can be made to look like they were done in flash and make them resizable.

Tracing Bitmaps using Flash

Here is a past tutorial on Tracing Bitmaps. (This works for JPG and GIF Files because when you import them into flash it automatically converts them to bitmaps.)

To convert a bitmap image to a vector image, you first have to import the bitmap you wish to convert by going to file > import or Ctrl+R and selecting the bitmap that you want to import.

With the bitmap selected, go to Modify > Trace Bitmap. You will have these options which you can select to best fit your needs:

Color Threshold sets the number of colors in your converted or traced bitmap. It reduces the number of colors by averaging the colors based on the value chosen in color threshold, and minimum area. Color Threshold contrasts RGB color values of adjacent pixels to the value entered. Lowering the color threshold puts more colors in the vector image.

Minimum Area is the radius measured in pixels, which color threshold uses to describe adjacent pixels when comparing pixels to decide what color to use for the center pixel.

The Curved Fit determines how smoothly outlines are drawn. If the curves in the bitmap have lots of twists select Very Tight. If they are smooth, then select Very Smooth.

Corner Threshold is similar to curve fit, but has to do with the corners of your bitmap image.

It's pretty easy to import images and make them into vector images, but it still takes some practice and getting used to. Same as learning any other method.

To make my images crisp when I convert them to vector images, I usually use these values when I "Trace Bitmap":

By playing with these values you can make some cool graphics from pictures that you've imported.

Just as working with other types of media, Flash just takes time. You can learn it from front to back, but the design doesn't just happen instantly. When I started doing Flash I thought I had the coolest website because I had moving objects. Now if it doesn't look professional and have at least a minimal level of action scripting I'm not happy with it.