EXPORTING FROM FLASH TO ANIMATED GIF

Flashagraf Home > Flash to Animated gif.

OK, so i know that flash is not for making animated gifs, but sometimes a client asks you for one! I was given a task to make some moving vector people and the only way I could make them move was to make the animation in flash and then figure out why it's so impossible to keep the color scheme for the gif that I'd exported from the flash. Eventually, after searching relentlessly in Google, I couldn't find a decent solution that didn't involve buying some kind of swf - gif converter. After making useless color paletes in photoshop and trying to tell the flash to use these colors, eventually I figured out a way to do it where the resulting animated gif didn't weigh too much either. Today, the same client got back in touch wanting to add a horse to the animation and I couldn't remember for the life of me how I did it the last time! Hence, I'm creating this page. Want to export your flash file and make an animated gif? Here's how you do it successfully.

Make your flash animation. Mine ended up being 50 frames long at 16 fps. and the resulting gif file weighs around 30k. I know it's a bit heavy but the client didn't mind. Next, export your flash movie as a Quick time movie. Yes! You couldn't do this with flash 8, you could only export as a quick time reference, but with CS4 (and maybe CS3 too?) you can make a proper QT movie. Next, import your quicktime movie into Photoshop! Yes! Using File - import - video frames to layers. Again, this is a CS4 feature, I hope you're up to date! You also need the latest version of quicktime player to do this, so upgrade that too if you need to.

You should then see all your frames in the animation window inside your photoshop. Next do file - save for web & devices. Make sure you choose "gif" from the drop down at the top right of the screen, and choose your settings according to how your optimized gif looks in the window until you're happy with the way it looks and its weight. Check "loop forever" if you need to. Press save and there you go!