My Xara4 exported pics are resized in Flash

**scottmcll** · 03 December 2008, 08:29 PM

Hello all,

For some time I have exported of PNGs and JPEGs from Xara 4 Pro to use in Flash 8 Pro. Today I decided to finally fire up Flash CS3 Pro and it is resizing all the pics smaller on import into Flash. It only happens to pics that have been exported from Xara. Note, I'm not referring to previous Flash 8 projects opened in CS3. I'm referring to pics exported from Xara4 and imported into new CS3 projects.

I rechecked and Flash 8 is not doing this. I've looked at every setting I can think of and can't figure out what's going on. ANyone have an idea?

Thanks,

Scott

**raynerj1** · 03 December 2008, 08:55 PM

By default Adobe products work in 72DPI and xara works at 96DPI. Scale the output from xara or export as 72DPI and it should work fine... at least with the versions I use. Your cuase might be something different. It is worth checking anyway.

**scottmcll** · 03 December 2008, 08:56 PM

Ok- I seem to be mistaken and the resizing I described above is happening in both Flash 8 and CS3. This is just maddening. I can not figure it out. If anyone with Flash could test the attached. It's a texture JPEG that's 300 x 300 pix that I imported into Xara and exported from Xara. at 300 x 300 96 dpi. But when imported into Flash, it's resized to 225 x 225. I thought it might be a resolution thing and have experimented with exporting at different resolutions, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Any ideas??

**Egg Bramhill** · 03 December 2008, 09:27 PM

Hi Scott, I can confirm it happens if you import it as a jpg. As JR points out it's the old 72/96 ppi chestnut. Example 72 divided by 96 = 0.75 0.75 x 300 = 225pixels.

The best way to avoid this is to import the jpg into XX. Select it and export it as export.swf Now import it into Flash and it imports at 300x300 pix.

I'm never sure but something else I do is select the jpg in XX and Arrange / Create bitmap copy. This will be a PNG. I then export that as export.swf. Once imported into Flash you can select it in the library, choose properties, compression and either choose lossy jpg or lossless Gif/Png. It can create sharper images as otherwise your importing an already lossy jpg and Flash will further degrade the image on publishing the jpg.

**scottmcll** · 03 December 2008, 10:55 PM

Thank you guys SO MUCH! I am really surprised I haven't run up against this before. I appreciate the responses and work-around suggestions. And why is Xara 96 as apposed to 72? I'm betting thats been dealt with in a lot of threads. If you could point me to one of the more coherent discussions, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers

**steve.ledger** · 03 December 2008, 11:03 PM

96dpi is Windows screen scaling default. 72dpi is Mac.

Adobe haven't caught up

You can change the default in your CS3/CS4 preferences.

**Egg Bramhill** · 03 December 2008, 11:12 PM

Scott, in the dawn of time when Mac's and PC's were in the embryo states Macs opted for 72 dots per inch I believe as this matched point sizes in printing and monitor came in one bog standard size (say 14") whilst Microsoft went for a higher resolution of 96 dots per inch.

So you find that many PC created programs were created to work at Microsofts default 96 dpi. Xara programs being an example. Although first created for the Acorn/BBC micro's they were ported across to PC's. So most programs made for PC's use 96 dpi. Word etc

This wasn't the case with programs created initialy on the Mac. Adobe, Macromedia etc. They were created at 72 dpi and when ported across to the PC platform the dpi wasn't changed and thus this anomaly arose. It's also the reason you'll often see on older web design sites that 72 dpi is the correct resolution to export bitmaps.

Of course a lot of this is becoming old hat as not only do monitors come in all shapes and sizes and resolution can be altered but so can the default pixels per inch of the display.

EDIT: Sledger beat me to it!

**scottmcll** · 03 December 2008, 11:43 PM

Thank you SO much! So, you're saying I can change a setting in Flash CS3 so I'm working in 96dpi and can bring things right in from Xara without the extra steps? If so, prey tell where? I've looked and don't see that setting, and I find Flash's help system to be nearly worthless for drilling down to what I want to know about.

Anyway, thank you, again, for the background. You all are the best!