Flash 8 Cookbook

2.4. Importing Acrobat PDF Content

Problem

You want to import content from a PDF to your Flash document.

Solution

Import the PDF directly into Flash.

Discussion

Since Flash MX 2004, Flash has supported importing PostScript files, including PDF. That means that you can directly import your PDF content without any additional converters. And Flash gives you several options when importing the content that allow you to control how it will treat things like text, layers, and pages.

To import PDF content, complete the following steps:

1. Create or obtain your PDF file.

2. Open or create a Flash document.

3. Choose File → Import → Import to Stage if you want to import the content both to the library and to the stage at the same time. Otherwise, if you want to import the content to the library only, choose File → Import → Import to Library. If you import to the stage, you’ll still be able to remove it from the stage if you want to at a later time.

4. Navigate to the PDF, select it, and choose Open.

5. In the Import Options dialog box, you are prompted for several options:

   1. PDF documents can consist of multiple pages. When importing the content, Flash will import the pages to either different scenes or keyframes. In most cases, we recommend that you use the keyframes option.

   2. You should also choose how you want Flash to interpret the PDF layers. By default, the layers in the PDF translate into layers in Flash. However, you also have the option of having each layer import into its own keyframe, or you can flatten all the ...