Photshop

Hola Gabe,

Ahha....I think that everyone who'se fiddled around in Flash has run into that headache, very much including myself.
There's a good trick for that.

How you save your work in Photoshop will affect how it can be imported into another software. A jpeg in essence, is a flattened bitmap image..."Flattened" meaning there are no other layers. It's one layer of pixels. In a jpeg, the background is converted into a white layer, unless of course you've colored the background another color, like red or green or black. But if you've left the background blank (with the grey and white checkers), then once it's saved as a jpeg, that background will then be solid white.
In flash, when you import it, it's importing that full square image, and nothing can really be done with it, save doing a trace bitmap of your jpeg image, which is heavy as hell and produces crappy results. The only reason I'd suggest importing a jpeg into Flash is if you have a fully illustrated background, that you plan on using as nothing else but a background. Either than that, don't bother, you'll just get crappy results. It's also important when working in Flash, that the size of your jpeg matches your stage size in Flash, perfectly. If your stage is 640 by 480 pixels, then make sure that when you save your work in photoshop, it's also 640 by 480. Otherwise, you'll get anti-aliasing on your image, which'll make it all look jaggedy and poor.

If however you want to import something into Flash that has the transparency maintained, then you want to save your photoshop image as a .png. "png" saves the transparent layers. If you have a house, where you just want the house and not the flattened background, then save it as a png, and only the active layers with artwork and color on it will be exported, and the checkered background will remain transparent. This is an EXCELLENT thing to know in Flash and photoshop, and you can produce a great deal of beautiful things that way. It's also a nice way to work with gradients. If you have a glowing softened effect in photoshop, you save it as a .png, and when you import it into Flash, you have that beautiful soft gradient, and you're ready to rock n' roll.
Note, that when you save a png, you don't need to use any kind of compression. Worry about that later...for now "none" is all you have to select, and you'll get what you're looking for.

You'll be able to produce MUCH more beautiful work this way, because you'll have the beauty of photoshop produced work, and it's all animatable in Flash. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

Then of course, there's after effects....that's what I like to call "digital crack".

Adam

can u be a little more specific please, I am new at photoshop

open your new image in photoshop..
I take will be BACKGROUND with a lock..

make a copy of it (background copy)
make a new layer that will have a checkerboard background (layer 1)..

drag the checkerboard background (layer 1) below you dup layer (background copy)

goto your background copy, use magic wand to select the background, then hit the delete.

you should now see your image with checkerboard background
you can throw away your original background or click on the eyeball

goto save for web, select png-24, check transparency and that should be it.
hope it's not too confusing..