Any of you guys any good creating gif images?

 

I use a program called Gif Movie Gear. It was free so I know its probably not one of the better programs out there, but its basic and therefore was easy to learn on.

 

The problem I have is that the image quality always declines, even though I have the gif animator set to read in as high quality as possible (256) - see my banner entry in the banner comp thread for reference.

 

Anyone know of a better program out there? Something that can keep the quality up there?

I use Macromedia Fireworks, its solid and reliable.

photoshop and image ready which comes wth photoshop are very good and export the gif in a high quality

imageready

Imageready would be good if it came with bloody Photoshop CS3... Can you install Imageready CS2 alongside Photoshop CS3?

I use Macromedia Fireworks, its solid and reliable.

 

He speaks the truth Fireworks all the way its what I use and is the near undistributed vector art king also works along side Marcomedia Flash. Which is what you will need to use to create high quality animations .gifs simply have there limits Flash is where its at. BTW macromedia is now part of Adobe ....... BLAH.

 

Here a example of the Highest Quality Fireworks gif verse a normal .jpg

 

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa188/VisOne_Photo/Animation.gif

Animated.Gif

 

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa188/VisOne_Photo/BigDBanner03.jpg

Standard.Jpg

 

Notice the amazing difference in the gradient of the background it would look completely wrong up against the background of the forums unlike the .jpg which I have created to look almost flawless. As long as your looking at using the .gif format you will always have to deal with that image loss especially if using allot of colours outside of the greyscale.

Edited January 27, 200817 yr by chambersAUS

JPG's will always have that. They are compressed images. PNG ftw

I made some good gifs but turns out I'm not allowed to use them on here -.-

i use microsoft gif animator.

 

as far as i am aware, it does not lose image quality.

its a very small program too

Sorry Bigboss that's simply not true a .gif will always lose quality due to the fact it can only support 256 colours. This is of course relative to what your trying create for example if I wanted to animate a simple colour schemed square box spinning. The .gif format will accommodate with no trouble what so ever however if I changed it to say a photograph of someone's head spinning it will struggle with the number of colours from the photograph. Basically a .gif has the limited colour palate of 256 while .jpeg has a staggering 16.7 million colours which makes the .jpeg better for pictures. However you cannot animate using the .jpeg extension same goes for the .png which is in allot of ways better than .jpeg if you really want to maintain image quality you will have to move to vector based programs like flash.

 

As to Davee's statement hes right .jpg is compressed while .png isn't but that of course means you have to deal with the added file size. Which I believe is still inconsiderate given that not every one has high speed connection or large download plans. There's no reason to use .png files as banners or for anything in high traffic areas where a high image quality isn't a must .jpg and .gif have both done the job fine for us so far and so the trend shall continue.

 

Anyway heres a basic break down of what each file extension can do.

 

.gif - The Graphics Interchange Format is great for putting animated images which large blocks of the same colour and supports transparency, and interlacing. Which means you can make images that have transparent back grounds as long as they don't have anything in that area.

.jpeg - The JPEG format has 16.7 million colours and has a compression algorithm which allows it to throw out date which may or may not be visible to the naked eye. This makes it grate for photographs, banners signature and your other misc images since you can make the file size smaller without necessarily lose quality.

 

.png - PNG was designed to offer the main features of the GIF format, including streaming and progressive file formats. It also provides greater depth of color, catering to images up to 24 bit in colour. You can use .png in place of .gifs since they can have transparent backgrounds and high colour count like the .jpeg without the compression so they will not lose quality however you cannot animate them either.

 

.swf - Is the extension name for the vector based flash files which are designed to deliver graphics and animation over the Internet. They can be interactive, play music, send people to other websites or be movies in there own right and are often smaller than animated .gif files. However you need flash installed on the viewers pc to watch them and you need Adobe/Macromedia Flash to create them.

Edited January 27, 200817 yr by chambersAUS

Ok so really no matter what gif program I use Im going to loose quality...

 

Oh well.

 

Thanks for all the info and feedback guys.

PNG's aren't that much bigger vis.

I also have Macromedia Fireworks and prefer it over photoshop. Easier to use.