Making Animated GIFs

I was wondering how to find freeware to make animated GIF's for avatars, I guess from AVI's and MPEG's. I've tried some in the past but they usually stamp something like "unregistered" on it or some other crap. Is there anything out there that's free (or dirt cheap)? Suggestions are appreciated :mrgreen:

well, ulead photoimpact is the cheapest of the bunch i think. You get a great easy-to-use image editor and gif animator for like < $30 when on sale. List price is like $49 though.

use Adobe IMAGEREADY.. it comes with photoshop.. and alot of ppl have photoshp... if u dont then .. i could burn ya a free copy and mail it to ya ;)

*edit.... i fear to think what kinda of animated avatar u'll make while noticing ur shingo sig.... just look at that butt... that is a nice butt :sweat: jk!*

lovelessemotion wrote:use Adobe IMAGEREADY.. it come with photoshop.. and alot of ppl have photoshp... if u dont then .. i could burn ya a free copy and mail it to ya ;)

hehehe
free is always better ;)

Ok this is old, but I'm bumping it :sweat: I'm trying to make animated gif's for avatars using Image Ready. Um, I'm not exactly sure how to do it. I mean, it gives some vague instructions. I'm not exactly l33t but I'm not comp illiterate, LOL. I want to do it with AVI and MPEG files, if possible. Can Image Ready do that? It seems to yell at me....like it'll only open friggin' Quicktime files. WTF is up with that? Did I break it? LOL

Also, I happened to have one Quicktime file I experimented with, and I made an animated GIF out of it. However I'm confused.....the file came out to be a whopping 2 MB. Is there any way to make it smaller so my image host will take it? I can't use files that big :sweat: How can I edit them to make them smaller in Image Ready? How can I add text and any other effects? Any help appreciated :mrgreen:

KouSeiya315 wrote:the file came out to be a whopping 2 MB. Is there any way to make it smaller so my image host will take it? I can't use files that big :sweat: How can I edit them to make them smaller in Image Ready?

I don't know how to use those tools you're using, because I use a different OS, but to make the image smaller, you should reduce the frame rate, dimensions, and resolution.

I would suggest trying for a maximum of 10-12 frames for an average animated gif. Especially something like an avatar where you want the file size to be small.

But 12 frames isn't much since most movies are 24 frames per second. So you may have to make some tradeoffs.

Have fun.

Dont have adobe imageready so dont really know what controls are available there. But to make the ava smaller, as vibius mentioned, you have to either limit the dimmensions, number of colors or frames. Better yet, if you can take the background off or paint it as a constant color, that would help a lot more since you are minimizing the variations between frames.

when you drop the number of colors, the avas might look ugly so see if imageready has a feature called minimum variance since that will lessen the reduced colors from being noticeable. My sig below uses 48 colors minimum variance.

Beside dat 2 software any more programm to create animated avatar?

Bsalez wrote:Beside dat 2 software any more programm to create animated avatar?

I would use mencoder to rip the video to separate images, then load them up in The Gimp, edit them into a multi-layer image, then save as PNG. Oh, and you have to wipe your HD first and install Linux. Ha ha, I'm so funny :nut: :nut: :nut: ... cough ... Ahem. sorry.

But I do have a serious question... does anyone know if MSIE has full support for PNG's yet? I heard in the past they had some problems correctly supporting transparency and animation because Microsoft flubbed the implementation for PNG. Unforgivable!

i think on some MSIE versions, there i still a problem with PNGs containing tranparencies.. sometimes it shows up as light gray. That's why I still use gif on pics with transparencies...

arnel98 wrote:i think on some MSIE versions, there i still a problem with PNGs containing tranparencies.. sometimes it shows up as light gray. That's why I still use gif on pics with transparencies...

Thanks for the info. I shall continue my uninterrupted loathing of all that is Microsoft now!

:shakehead:

vibius wrote:

I don't know how to use those tools you're using, because I use a different OS, but to make the image smaller, you should reduce the frame rate, dimensions, and resolution.

I would suggest trying for a maximum of 10-12 frames for an average animated gif. Especially something like an avatar where you want the file size to be small.

But 12 frames isn't much since most movies are 24 frames per second. So you may have to make some tradeoffs.

Have fun.

Hmm, I usually use around 20 frames and shrink the gif to a size around 300KB... You can reduce the size by reducing the color depth from 24-bits to 8-bits...

bmwracer wrote:Hmm, I usually use around 20 frames and shrink the gif to a size around 300KB... You can reduce the size by reducing the color depth from 24-bits to 8-bits...

I dunno, 300KB seems to me like a lot for an avatar ... but sure, if add more frames, it will look better, but take up more space.

Maybe we should have an animated gif contest!

Best/Smallest/Cutest ...

:hehe:

vibius wrote:

I dunno, 300KB seems to me like a lot for an avatar ... but sure, if add more frames, it will look better, but take up more space.

Maybe we should have an animated gif contest!

Best/Smallest/Cutest ...

:hehe:

Yeah, 300KB is sorta big, but if I shrink it any smaller, I can't see Ryoko-chan's face or the movement gets choppy...

arnel98 wrote:well, ulead photoimpact is the cheapest of the bunch i think. You get a great easy-to-use image editor and gif animator for like < $30 when on sale. List price is like $49 though.

if anyone is the guy to talk to about animated gifs it would be arnel98 :hehe: He comes up with the most creative ones on this board. You gonna have to teach me how you do it :D

Uchiha Potato wrote:if anyone is the guy to talk to about animated gifs it would be arnel98 :hehe: He comes up with the most creative ones on this board. You gonna have to teach me how you do it :D

Yep, Arnel is the man... :applaud:

thanks guys :rolleyes:

the text objects, on gif animator, they have what's called banner text where you have several pre-made animations to choose from. But i rarely use that since i can't edit it on photoimpact anymore when banner objects are included. I use what's called 'tweening' function and thats present in both ga and ir i think. you specify what the text or image initially looks, specify another image or text for the final look, and # of frames and it will do the animation for you. That's what i usually do for the text objects...

The rest like borders/masking/etc, i use PI for that and im sure photoshop has hundreds more effects than PI so u'll have more options to choose from.

Hope that helps...

arnel98 wrote:thanks guys :rolleyes:

the text objects, on gif animator, they have what's called banner text where you have several pre-made animations to choose from. But i rarely use that since i can't edit it on photoimpact anymore when banner objects are included. I use what's called 'tweening' function and thats present in both ga and ir i think. you specify what the text or image initially looks, specify another image or text for the final look, and # of frames and it will do the animation for you. That's what i usually do for the text objects...

The rest like borders/masking/etc, i use PI for that and im sure photoshop has hundreds more effects than PI so u'll have more options to choose from.

Hope that helps...

Arnel, the problem with tweening is that it'll make the file size that much larger, neh?

I use PowerDVD to capture frames then use Image Ready to create the animated gif... If it's too large, I carefully pick out the frames I can delete so that the animation isn't choppy and/or I reduce the size of the image, usually by one-half...

i use animation shop
it comes with photoshop pro :D

I gotta get some skills with the animated avatar stuff!
I'm fortunate that Arnel98 hooked me up with an animated Rina avatar though! :D

(Currently giving it a rest. But it'll be back)