Image w/ glow and dropshadow problems

Hi there. What I'm tring to do is something that would seem very basic and easy, but I'm still having problems.

I'm just typing out a word. Then applying a slight bevel to it, a slight glow, and a slight drop shadow. My problem is that when I save it as a gif (must have a transparent background), it looks terrible. The glow and dropshadow are pretty much eliminated, and the letters look all choppy.

Anyone have some advice? Thanks much!

You shouldn't save it as a GIF, you should save it as a JPEG. GIF's in general don't have the color space of a JPEG. GIF's can do about 256 colors, JPEGs can do 16.8 million colors.

If you're trying to do a drop-shadow with a transparent background for a web project, just drop that silly idea right now. What you want to do it to make a JPEG with a background color that matches your page's background color and make your button from there.

Yes, I understand where you're coming from. In fact, I've always preferred to work with jpegs than gifs. The thing is.. I'm working off a template that was made by another designer. I need to change a few of the menu titles. I have the previous designer's psd file, and I can change the menu titles in the psd just fine, I just can't export the image w/ a transparent background like he did. My proof is that he has the files in a flash .fla and he made the background of the image transparent so he could make the word glow with a rollover. (note: this is not a typical follover image swap, but a flash movie symbol that makes the word gradually glow and then fade w/ rollOff).

So... I am certain there is a way to bring an image of a word w/ a glow and dropshadow w/ a transparent background into flash w/out any problems, cause this guy did it! I am looking right at it! Unfortunately, I have no way to contact him.

Any other ideas are most appreciated!

Things like glows and (soft edged) drop shadows just take a lot of colors to look right. Try saving it with the max allowed with a .gif. The file will be larger than it should be, but if how it looks is that important, it may be a fair trade off.

Posting an example might also be helpful.

What he did was to create a symbol, a movie and a button in flash and export it as a .GIF. You can do this in ImageReady if you know how to create tweened animations.

You need to learn Flash, not Photoshop. The two are completely different critters. Flash will allow you to do things that Photoshop and ImageReady can't touch. And vice versa.

I have been working with Flash for 6 years. You cannot create effects such as dropshadow in Flash. Effects like this need to be created in Photoshop, Fireworks, etc, and imported to Flash to then be made into a symbol and movie/button.

What he did was import the image with the transparent background, which already had a glow and dropshadow on the word, and then made it into a symbol of a movie to add a different colored gradual glow when rolloed over/off. My original problem is still getting a high quality image imported to flash while keeping the transparent background so only the word can be seen, which allows me to make the "movie glow rollover".

Solved.

http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...ed=1#post812203