Programs for gifs

[tracer]

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any programs I could use to make some gif images. I am quite good with gfx but I want to help you guys out with these avs. If you could tell me what some of you use please tell me.

[Flash_Squirrel]

Originally Posted by tracer

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any programs I could use to make some gif images. I am quite good with gfx but I want to help you guys out with these avs. If you could tell me what some of you use please tell me.

Ulead Gif Animator 5
Adobe ( ) ImageReady CS

Some other unknown programs

[Shii]

Avoid GIFs at all costs... they are really ugly and limited to 256 colors. Use PNGs instead.

If you need to make something animated, Flash_Squirrel's programs are the best I have heard of.

[Flash_Squirrel]

Originally Posted by ashibaka

[...]limited to 256 colors.[...]

Look at my signature, its a mystery IMHO, but the format is .gif and the picture have more than 256 colors. (I know because if I try to save my signature as a .gif again, it loses *a lot* of colors.).

Jpeg is the best, PNG is still not fully supported on the 'net.

[Shii]

Originally Posted by Flash_Squirrel

Jpeg is the best, PNG is still not fully supported on the 'net.

I dare you to find me one web browser that does not support PNG. Safari, Konqueror, Netscape, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Firebird, Opera? All of them support PNG.

On the other hand, it is widely known that GIFs are limited to 256 colors.
http://www.scantips.com/basics9g.html
If you look closely, you can see the bad dithering in your signature. My signature has no such problem.

[Imazul]

png is better than jpeg, usually smaller and more quality

[[Titan]]

Originally Posted by Flash_Squirrel

Look at my signature, its a mystery IMHO, but the format is .gif and the picture have more than 256 colors. (I know because if I try to save my signature as a .gif again, it loses *a lot* of colors.).

I love gif, I can get a big (animated) signature with transparency without exceeding the 50.000 byte rule

ashibaka: I doubt anyone will notice the 'bad' dithering in Flash' signature, unless the distance between their eyes and the screen is less than 30 CM...

[Shii]

Originally Posted by [Titan]

I love gif, I can get a big (animated) signature with transparency without exceeding the 50.000 byte rule

PNG is always smaller

[Flash_Squirrel]

No need to be so mean. <_<;
I think there is nothing wrong with a gif file, the quality is not that bad and the size is quite small, the same pic saved as .gif with photoshop had a different color quality, thats why I was wondering about that.

[Shii]

GIFs have to be dithered to fit in 256 colors, and some programs do it better than others.

[[Titan]]

Tried png, after I had to resize my signature (the almighty Xris ordered me to do so )

the original GIF I used (68825 bytes)


a 100% jpeg of the same image (78070 bytes)


the png I made out of the same source as the gif (148192 bytes) also, transparency did not work in this image


in the end, the png was more than twice as large as the gif. So I went for a jpg of 30 KB.

Flash: As for the quality of the gif in Photoshop, PS has several palettes, my guess is you (or the program) picked a wrong palette

[Shii]

Originally Posted by [Titan]

in the end, the png was more than twice as large as the gif. So I went for a jpg of 30 KB.

I don't know what you did to that PNG, but correctly converted it is 10KB smaller than the GIF. And the transparency does work, you just can't see it because you're not using a Web browser.

Actual PNG: 59163 B


To convert, I just ran "convert hideous.gif small.png" on the commandline. Nothing special.

By the way, my signature is also transparent.

[[Titan]]

that's because you converted the 256 colour gif to png, instead of the 23812 colour source picture, even with maximum compression using irfanview, I can't get the filesize below 130 KB

bottomline:
-gifs have only 256 colours, which is not really a problem unless the source contains a huge amount of unique colours
-png has superior compression techniques compared to gif and supports 16.7 million colours, but if you have a large amount of unique colours in your picture, filesize can get large, also, transparently does not work correctly in IE (which a huge amount of internet users use, and I don't think they care about IE not being a browser, I know I don't )
-jpg also supports 16.7 million colours, and has great compression (really useful if some mod orders you to get your sig size below 30 KB j/k ), but has no transparency and compression is lossy

I'll quit here, it's not like we're ever going to agree 100% anyway

[Shii]

Originally Posted by [Titan]

-gifs have only 256 colours, which is not really a problem unless the source contains a huge amount of unique colours
-png has superior compression techniques compared to gif and supports 16.7 million colours, but if you have a large amount of unique colours in your picture, filesize can get large

Breaking news! When you're using twenty times as many colors, it takes up more space!

Yeah, whatever. Just don't use GIFs.

[tracer]

um....I already knew about gifs and stuff. I was wonderin how do I cut the clip out of the eps. Do I do it in premiere or in photoshop. I have flash, imageready and all those goody programs. So what do I do?

[werellar]

bsplayer, jasc animation shop, powerdvd... there's a few

[Flash_Squirrel]

Originally Posted by tracer

um....I already knew about gifs and stuff. I was wonderin how do I cut the clip out of the eps. Do I do it in premiere or in photoshop. I have flash, imageready and all those goody programs. So what do I do?

VirtualDUB for frame capture.

[werellar]

Originally Posted by Flash_Squirrel

VirtualDUB for frame capture.

by the way Flash Squirrel, your borders are excellently done

[Flash_Squirrel]

Originally Posted by werellar

by the way Flash Squirrel, your borders are excellently done

Its a super cheap effect. -_-;; (Gaussian blur: 2,3)