How to make your own animated GIFs

[felix]

Photoshop merged with ImageReady, sort of. Fireworks didn't replace Imageready, it's been there for some time...

[panzerfan]

I can add to the Imageready issue. Photoshop's "merge" with imageready isn't great... for that once you save as *.gif, you cannot open it with photoshop for touch-up work, for it will show only the first frame. The compression and the palette mapping leave artifacts behind over gif files which you must use Fireworks to clean up.

This means that one is better off working on your original image as a photoshop psd, and then have Fireworks on hand to open it and manipulate it. Honestly, Fireworks is superior to Photoshop at the job, but it's still not perfect for the task of making *.gif, plus that I suddenly ask myself as to 'why on Earth am I not doing this through Flash already?'

[felix]

I too would like to do with in flash. There 's no real security risk or anything silly like that, and it could probably be implemented with inline-frames to prevent oversize, the only issue is with detecting the size. Some of the mods might find it troublesome... but for what it's worth I wouldn't expect too much flash being used.

[Rhyel]

I use Beneton Movie GIF

Link to main site

Its if free, easy to use, You only need to optimize frames in gif first.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by panzerfan

I can add to the Imageready issue. Photoshop's "merge" with imageready isn't great... for that once you save as *.gif, you cannot open it with photoshop for touch-up work, for it will show only the first frame. The compression and the palette mapping leave artifacts behind over gif files which you must use Fireworks to clean up.'

The GIMP opens animated gifs as a series of layers. You can edit each of them separately.

@Sephi: I really like your signature demos. They are both smaller than I expected at less than 50K. How hard would it be to make the second one an animated gif? I'm also concerned about the security implications of Flash animations, though I admit I haven't read up on the issue in some time.

[Sephi]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

The GIMP opens animated gifs as a series of layers. You can edit each of them separately.

@Sephi: I really like your signature demos. They are both smaller than I expected at less than 50K. How hard would it be to make the second one an animated gif? I'm also concerned about the security implications of Flash animations, though I admit I haven't read up on the issue in some time.

It's possible, but it requires a insane amount of frames. And you would have to do it without the random snow. The Lucky Star one is a combination of snow being randomly generated. And the star glowing and lighten up the faces.

To create that you would first have to do the star glows with tweens. Which isn't a problem for Photoshop/Imageready. But than you have to do the snow manual one by one. Which is quite a pain and it has to match the glowing of the star for the loop. Overall i wouldn't recommend someone to try it in imageready. It's probably not a sane thing to do, and never possible to do it within 50kb.

To sum it up. It's possible, but never with the same size. And never with the same quality. Since flash doesn't suffer from a 256 color limit.

[Neaco]

Originally Posted by panzerfan

I can add to the Imageready issue. Photoshop's "merge" with imageready isn't great... for that once you save as *.gif, you cannot open it with photoshop for touch-up work, for it will show only the first frame. The compression and the palette mapping leave artifacts behind over gif files which you must use Fireworks to clean up.
'

Actually.... YOU CAN.

Adobe will never tell you this but I figured out how to force Photoshop CS3 to open gifs with all frames.

First thing you do is open PS CS3 up and go to

File > IMPORT > VIDEO FRAMES AS LAYERS


Assuming you have some animated gif on your desktop already, well it doesn't show up in the LOAD Window right?

See where it says file name: at the bottom? (Where you are supposed to type the name of the file).

Type in *.*

Yes, just those three - asterisk, period, asterisk, no spaces between, and press enter.

Suddenly all the other files show up in the window above, including your gif, select it and click load.

A final screen pops up called Load Video to Layers. Just click Ok.

And the gif is opened with all frames.



If Adobe asks anything, I never typed this and you never saw this post ok?

[Utter_iMADNESS]

YES!!! I finally figured out how to make my own gifs after hours of experimenting!!!
Here's my first one i got it from Rozen Maiden Traumend:


I used Photoshop CS3 Extended and virtualdub. And i find it weird that my gifs tend to work better on firefox cuz they seem to lag with IE.

[Dxon]

I dont get it. I want to save it. So I do save as.. (I use PS CS3)
I choose .GIF and safe into my DONE folder. But then I just get one frame saved!! O_o
How to make it complete into a moving GIF?? (Im just noob. :P )

[edit1]
I just finished my second moving avatar. Better or worse. I like it. ^^
First one is <- .

[Mr Bland]

Hmmm, I don't see "Save image sequence"

nevermind, it was under export

[sasuke13]

Sometimes when I have my finished product, they show pink "snow" during it's actions. Why is that, and how can I prevent that?

[felix]

Pink snow..?! a example please...

[sasuke13]

I forgot to mention an important part that I used the GIFs on MySpace...



If I show the GIFs here, they won't show the pink, but in MySpace, they do show them. This is just a still image of wut's happeneing. The 2 icons on the bottom just have a little bit of pink. Is that common?

[felix]

Uhh.. no. It's abnormal. I can only imagine that when it comes to MySpace your uploading them to the site or something and they are doing re-optimizing ~ in the process screwing the entire thing.

[sasuke13]

oh ic, that sux...

[RNKxBoA]

Hi everyone,

been a long time, since I last visited this topic.
But I got this problem, I encountered while making a new GIF.
It comes out all black!

Check:


WTH?!

[felix]

Looks like it's been optimized to hell.

1. What were you using to create it?
2. Does it look like that in the optimization window?
3. Does this happen to others you make?

[RNKxBoA]

a. imageready. made a gif using virtualdub
b. no, it looked good
c. never...I made 2 other gifs today, they came out good

the only thing I did different then described in the tut, I first made it a gif.
instead of saving frames.
the gif virtualdub created was also fine.

[v717]

Just type MovToGIF in the google search bar, follow the closest link and Download "MovToGIF" Its a Freeware and it's size is only 82Kb.
You don't even have to install it.

[RNKxBoA]

no weird watermarks?

EDIT:
This won't work for me, since I need to cut a part from it that I want to see.
thnx anyway!