Animated GIF Help

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06-19-2008, 07:00 PM
Evastio

Animated GIF Help

So is anyone here good with making animated GIFs?

Yesterday I installed Easy GIF Animator on my computer and made the GIF in my sig. However, I was planning to use it as an avatar but couldn't since the file size was too big. I was wondering if there's better GIF programs out there that make smaller GIF files and can somehow make longer GIF animations faster to make (so you don't have to go picture by picture for each animation sequence).
06-19-2008, 07:46 PM
aquatius

UnFREEz, it's simple, easy to use and always free.
06-20-2008, 02:41 AM
Evastio

I don't mean to sound picky, but I'm sure there was this program that allows you to take movie files and turn them into animated GIFs or something like that.

Also, I'm still having file size problems with animated GIFs, even though I converted the images from PNG to JPEG.
06-20-2008, 04:53 PM
aquatius

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evastio

I don't mean to sound picky, but I'm sure there was this program that allows you to take movie files and turn them into animated GIFs or something like that.

Also, I'm still having file size problems with animated GIFs, even though I converted the images from PNG to JPEG.

There are programs that do that but the quality is usually sucky.
06-21-2008, 03:51 PM
crono_logical

Although your gif is only 4 frames and would normally become small enough easily for avatar limits here, the major problem with it is the massive jpg artifacts in it making it difficult to actually compress as small as it should. I'd suggest you remake it from scratch using a better source for the pictures and not whatever jpgs it appears to have come from :p (read - I'm too lazy to actually go over each frame pixel by pixel to clear up the artifacts like I'd normally do since there's far too much corruption in that image :p)

Converting to jpg is a big mistake when working with any images - jpg is for end-results only, not for work in progress :p
06-21-2008, 05:02 PM
Marshall Banana

1 Attachment(s)

Reduce its colors in Adobe ImageReady; doing that reduces its size and cleans it up a bit.
06-22-2008, 01:08 AM
crono_logical

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marshall banana

Reduce its colors in Adobe ImageReady; doing that reduces its size and cleans it up a bit.

Nice idea, I think my lateral thinking is starting to fail me :p
06-23-2008, 12:18 AM
Evastio

Quote:

Originally Posted by crono_logical

Although your gif is only 4 frames and would normally become small enough easily for avatar limits here, the major problem with it is the massive jpg artifacts in it making it difficult to actually compress as small as it should. I'd suggest you remake it from scratch using a better source for the pictures and not whatever jpgs it appears to have come from :p (read - I'm too lazy to actually go over each frame pixel by pixel to clear up the artifacts like I'd normally do since there's far too much corruption in that image :p)

Converting to jpg is a big mistake when working with any images - jpg is for end-results only, not for work in progress :p

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marshall banana

Reduce its colors in Adobe ImageReady; doing that reduces its size and cleans it up a bit.

Thanks guys.

So what image format should I save pictures in before I turn them into animated GIFs? I thought for sure JPEG would be good since it usually takes up the least space.
06-23-2008, 12:40 AM
snacks

FTR: Imageready can import .mov and .avi's and lets you pick from what points in the movie/show whatever you want to use.

For the more advanced, I've recently discovered virtualdub can make animated gifs D:

imagine my surprise.
06-23-2008, 12:53 AM
crono_logical

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evastio

Thanks guys.

So what image format should I save pictures in before I turn them into animated GIFs? I thought for sure JPEG would be good since it usually takes up the least space.

If you're saving the image for editing later on, you should pick a lossless format like png or bmp, or even the native format of your image editor if you have stuff like layers and animation frames and other advanced features to keep for later.

jpg is a lossy format, i.e. throws away or changes information the eye can't see easily to make smaller filesizes, and gif has limited palette size, so they should only be kept for final products :p
06-23-2008, 01:42 AM
Balzac

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skt

FTR: Imageready can import .mov and .avi's and lets you pick from what points in the movie/show whatever you want to use.

For the more advanced, I've recently discovered virtualdub can make animated gifs D:

imagine my surprise.

Imagine youe surprise.

As Scott said, imageready is good. But hard to come by now as Adobe have stopped making it. The new Fireworks does the same, also made by Adobe. :D