In this tutorial, you will be guided through all of the steps to create a simple Flash template that consists of three sections. It's important to understand that Flash should be used as a publishing tool, not an editing one. This means, building your project in Flash should be the last step in the multimedia creation process.

1. Setting image sizes

Before you begin building a project in Flash, you want to make sure you have correctly sized all of your images in Photoshop before you import them.

Don't resize images in Flash because it may cause images to appear jagged or distorted, similarly to how an image might appear if it is resized on a Web page. This requires you to know how your Flash project will appear before you start building it. Generally people first build comps or mockups in Photoshop to size images and understand the size relationships between the different elements.

In our tutorial sample media, we have already gone through the process of correctly sizing all of the images to match the output.

2. Setting the Stage

First, click anywhere in the stage to bring up the stage properties in your property inspector pane. Click on the "size" option, and this will allow you to set the document size and background color, among other things. Make your project 600 x 400 pixels, the same size as our background image.
 
In most cases, you will check with the Web team first to see how large to publish your Flash project. You should decide this before building your project.

3. Importing your photos

To import your photos, simply go to the File menu and click "Import -> Import to Library"
You can pick multiple photos to import at the same time by holding down the shift key and selecting multiple photos. Go ahead and import all of the photos from the images folder in our tutorial sample.