Suusje's Guide to Grabpiccing in FlashIn this guide I'm going to teach you how create grabpics using a program called Macromedia Flash 8 Professional (or 'Flash'). Flash is a very useful program for this, because it uses
vector graphics instead of
raster graphics, which means you can zoom in or resize the picture all you want without loss of detail. If you resize a small 100x100 pixel resolution vector image to a resolution of 1000x1000 pixels, it will still look crisp and detailed. Flash also has a very powerful line manipulating tool which also comes in handy when creating grabpics.
A free Macromedia Flash 8 Professional trial can be downloaded here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/flashpro/Step 1: Finding a pic to grabYou can basicly trace everything using Flash, but since this is a Simpsons forum, I'll stick with Simpsons pics. There are lot's of sites where you can find framegrabs to trace (Framegrabs are screenshots taken from episodes), like:
But framegrabs aren't the only things you can trace. You can also use Flash to trace sketches you made.
For this guide I've chosen this framegrab from "A Star Is Torn":
Step 2: Importing the pic into FlashFire up Flash and create a new file. Now you should see a white area in the center of your screen (this, and the gray background surrounding it, is called the 'stage'). Go to the menu and select
File -> Import -> Import to Stage.... Now you will see a dialog that asks you to select a file. You should select the picture you want to grab. The picture will now appear in the center of the stage.
If the picture you want to grab is bigger than the white area on your stage, you should rightclick on the gray background and select 'Document Properties'. A dialog with the files properties will now pop up.
Match has 3 options:
Printer,
Contents and
Default. If the picture you want to grab is bigger than the white area, you should choose
Contents. If it doesn't, you can leave it at
Default. After doing this, you can close the dialog.
Above the stage, you can see the Timeline. This is useful for creating animations, but in this guide, we're only going to use the Layer part of the Timeline.
Create a new layer by clicking on the
Insert Layer button
. Make sure the newly created layer is located on top of the other layer (the one that contains the pic you want to grab). After doing this, you should lock the layer that contains the pic you want to grab by clicking on the dot below the
Lock icon 
. You should get something like this:
Step 3: Let the tracing commence!First you have to select the
Line Tool 
from the toolbar on the left. As you can see on the bottom of the screen the line tool has some settings you can change. I use a line thickness of 2 pixels for my grabpics, but some people prefer thicker or thinner lines for their pics, so you'll have to see for yourself what thickness you want to use. You can leave the other settings untouched.
Before you start tracing, I recommend you zoom in to 800% or 1600%. This makes tracing a lot easier and minor errors are easier to notice, so you can fix them quickly. You can zoom in using the
Zoom Tool 
or the dropdown box that is located on the top right side of the Timeline.
Select the line tool again. It's time to draw the first line! Draw a line over one of the curves in the image by holding the left mouse button. When you release the left mouse button, the line will appear. Now it's time to select the
Selection Tool 
and bend the lines. You can bend lines by clicking on them and pulling them into the right shape:
Now continue doing this until you've traced all the lines in the image.
Tips- You can delete lines by selecting them using the
Selection Tool and pressing
Delete on your keyboard.
- Be criticial about the lines! If a line doesn't look perfect, redo it. It will greatly improve the quality of your grabpics.
- When you have to trace eyes or the beads on Marge's or Lisa's necklace, it's easier to use the
Oval Tool 
than the Line Tool. If you hold
Shift while drawing a circle with the Oval Tool, you can create perfect circles. You can duplicate lines and circles by selecting them with the Selection Tool and pressing
CTRL + D. This is useful for the necklaces, because all the beads will be the same size if you duplicate them.
- If you have to bend small or very large curves, it's better to use more than 1 line segment. It will give a much better result when you do that:
- An easy way to check if you've traced all the lines is to hide the layer with the framegrab in it. You can do this by clicking on the dot below the
Eye Icon 
in the layer where the framegrab is in. If a layer is hidden, a red cross is shown:
Step 4: Coloring your imageOnce you're finished tracing, your picture will look something like this:
The only thing your grabpic needs now is color. Click on the paint bucket in the Color part of the toolbar. A dialog will appear showing all kinds of colors to choose from. Your mouse arrow will also change into an eyedropper, which allows you to pick a color from the framegrab by just clicking on the color you want.
The problem with low quality framegrabs is that the colors are often too dark, so you might want to play around a bit with the
Color Mixer located on the top right of your screen until you get a good color. Once you've picked the right color, you can use the
Paint Bucket Tool 
to apply the color to your grabpic.
Step 5: Finishing up and saving your grabpicAfter you've colored your grabpic, it's time to delete the layer that contains the pic you were grabbing. You can do this by rightclicking on it and selecting
Delete Layer. Now you can save the file by selecting
File -> Export -> Export Image from the menu. Pick a nice name for your grabpic and be sure to save your grabpic as .gif or .png. The other filetypes are not made for this sort of images.
This is how my grabpic turned out:
The End...I hope I've helped you with this guide. If you think some parts of the guide need to be improved or changed or if you have any questions, just post it. I'll be more than happy to receive feedback and answer your questions
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