Forums | MacLife

Kirk · 2002-12-24 12:52 pm

Heh, I use Graphic Converter for a few things too. Setting transparency, minimizing the color table and creating animated GIFs seem easier in GC.

Black Stallion · 2002-12-31 3:38 pm

I have an animated GIF taht I'd like to make smaller byte-wise (think its 16 k now)

could somone help me get it down to 6 k?

(tried Photoshop, but it doesnt take too kindly to animated GIFs)

Kirk · 2002-12-31 4:02 pm

http://www.macaddict.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2476
http://www.macaddict.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=434

Og · 2002-12-31 5:59 pm

but it wants to dither the image down to 216 colors, which looks not so good. I ended up just doing a 'Save As' in GraphicConverter, but I ought to be able to do this in Photoshop.

You mean "256 colors", right? Unless you used the Web palette.

If you did a Save-as in GC, then it too dropped the color depth to 256.

Por que?

Because you can only get transparent backgrounds in GIF (or PNG). If you're trying to retain the photo quality of a JPG, ain't a-gonna happen. Hence the dithering. GIFs only have 256 colors, so to make up for that deficiency, you get dithering. It's a small price to pay, but we're your friends. We won't notice. Much. wink

Case in point: when I twiddled Chewie's avatar about, it started out as a JPG, but had to finally be a GIF for the trans bg. You really can't see a difference. Mainly because of all that fur. That girl is hirsute. big_smile

Sorry, but dem's da berries.

Try the PS GIF export settings as 256, dithered 100%, adaptive.

If you have PS 7, then you also have ImageReady 7. It's better at this than PS.

Og · 2002-12-31 6:00 pm

I have an animated GIF taht I'd like to make smaller byte-wise (think its 16 k now)

could somone help me get it down to 6 k?

(tried Photoshop, but it doesnt take too kindly to animated GIFs)

send it to me. ogfrag at yahoo dot com

I'll see what I can do.

Black Stallion · 2002-12-31 10:14 pm

send it to me. ogfrag at yahoo dot com

I'll see what I can do.

Comin your way...

brainiac_7 · 2002-12-31 11:22 pm

Dana, the way I would do it is:

Create a new layer copy of your original image. Erase the background, or whatever you wish to be transparent on the new layer. Send the file to ImageReady7. Turn off the original layer so that is is invisible. You should now have your copy layer with the erasures. In ImageReady's Optimize palette select GIF (and make sure Show Options shows the whole Optimize palette). Choose Perceptual on the Optimize palette, as opposed to Web or Selective (Perceptual makes for a better photo GIF). Check Transparency, and set Matte to None, since the Forum uses either a white or blue background. Now you begin paring down the number of colors in the Perceptual color palette until you find a happy medium (maybe 64 colors will work for a photo GIF).

Hope that helps; God how did I get along before ImageReady!

Og · 2003-01-01 12:43 am

Comin your way...

Comin' back atcha.

I'll wager you can't tell the diff between the original and the new one. smile Unless you look really really close. roll And probably not even then.

djdawson · 2003-01-01 1:01 am

Thanks for the tips everyone! It hadn't occured to me to use ImageReady, since I never run it, aside from starting it accidentally when I hit the wrong keyboard shortcut - I am indeed using Photoshop 7 in OS X, BTW). It was just surprising to me that such a seemingly simple operation as specifying a transparent background for a GIF would be as complex as it apparently is in Photoshop. Of course, photos and GIF's aren't really a very goood match, anyway. Anyway, thanks again - it was useful, and now that I know how to do it it's not that bad, and it turns out that mostly the same process works directly in Photoshop, which I'm much more comfortable with that ImageReady.

brainiac_7 · 2003-01-01 7:26 am

How I rung in the new year? Giving out transparency tips for Photoshop! Oh well, it sure beats porcelain worship or getting a DWI big_smile

The Optimize palette is much more complicated to write about than to use. I couldn't live without ImageReady; it's compression is great, the slice tool is easy to use. I do more than half my layouts in IR, for any complex image -based tables. If you tweak it's HTML settings it writes beautiful code, too.

Anyway, it's important to set the GIF's transparency Matte to None when producing an image that will have to blend with more than one background color, otherwise you'll end up with a wierd color halo against at least one of the background colors. Sometimes the results of Matte: None are not nice to look at if the bkgd. colors are disimilar; it's all about tweaking and checking your work.

Black Stallion · 2003-01-01 2:28 pm

Thanks Og!

Meh, way cool!

Yall like it?

Forums | MacLife

#26 2002-12-24 12:52 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#27 2002-12-31 3:38 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#28 2002-12-31 4:02 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#29 2002-12-31 5:59 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#30 2002-12-31 6:00 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#31 2002-12-31 10:14 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#32 2002-12-31 11:22 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#33 2003-01-01 12:43 am

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#34 2003-01-01 1:01 am

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#35 2003-01-01 7:26 am

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

#36 2003-01-01 2:28 pm

Re: Where can I get a cool pic for my sig???

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