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Adobe Flash was initially a graphics program, but with the growth of the Flash platform and the rise in popularity of Flash games on the web, is Flash still relevant as graphics tool? Why?

(I'm not looking for a description of Flash. I know what it is.)

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It was a 'graphics program' in the sense it has drawing tools. I suppose it's as relevant as it ever was in that sense. Plenty of animation houses still use it. – DA01 Jan 27 '11 at 17:34
Sure it is. So is PhotoShop. And MS Paint. And sketchup and... well, 'graphics tool' is a pretty gigantic software genre. – DA01 Apr 12 '11 at 2:20
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This question is a bit too argumentative. Feel free to change the question to something less argumentative, and I'd be happy to re-open it. See blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective – PearsonArtPhoto♦ Apr 12 '11 at 2:29

closed as not a real question by PearsonArtPhoto♦ Apr 12 '11 at 2:26

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

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I definitely love the drawing tools in Flash. They are a great compromise between the freedom of raster drawing tools and the resolution advantages of vector graphics. For example, there's a fill bucket; you can't do that in Illustrator. Paths combine when they cross instead of staying as independent vectors, but you can still select and separate them if you want. etc.

I'm finished up an iPhone game right now, and the way I did all the graphics was to draw them in Flash, export to PNG, and then sometimes touch them up in Photoshop.

I suppose this isn't a definitive answer to your question, but that's my 2 cents.

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Cool! I'm an iOS dev too and I'd love to see the game when it comes out. – Moshe Apr 12 '11 at 1:37
If you want to hear about it when I release follow the Twitter in my profile. – jhocking Apr 12 '11 at 1:45
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Flash is a simple program to add interactive animations to the web. It's still relevant because there are no other tools for creating complex, highly interactive applications for the web. Canvas is coming with HTML5 and javascript can do amazing things, but Flash is still the king in this respect.

That being said, flash is on its way out as a technology to be used in the browser. We will have to see where it lands, but you can use flash in more places than just on the web, eg there are ways to create iPhone apps with flash.

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I would just add that flash could still be considered a grpahics program due to it's ability to animate. There are numerous web shows and shorts that are 100% flash and don't require any or little actionscript. – Johannes Jan 27 '11 at 16:10
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I would contest the point that Flash is a "simple" program - it provides a fully featured, object oriented authoring environment that can be used to develop highly interactive web and desktop based applications. Having said that it is still (IMHO) the best tool for creating simple, linear animations for the web. I would fully agree with the other points made. – duncmc Jan 28 '11 at 10:44
@duncmc It's a very simple program if you're using it for animation, especially compared to some of the other software out there used for animating. If you're using ActionScript it's still a pretty simple program compared to the other object oriented programming solutions out there. It's meant to be so. – MikeNGarrett Jan 28 '11 at 15:54

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